Shenanigans at the Barrel House (4 Viewers)

[sgago84]

I really wanted to make this one. But it’s been a busy year with a lot of obligations. Looking forward to a more relaxing 2022.

Also why quads always gotta come out at the barrel house. I’m calling shenanigans on your shuffler.

 

[Phish1321]

I really wanted to make this one. But it’s been a busy year with a lot of obligations. Looking forward to a more relaxing 2022.

Also why quads always gotta come out at the barrel house. I’m calling shenanigans on your shuffler.

We don’t even know you anymore Sam, lol

 

[Irish]

Snuck into 3rd place in the tourney, onto cash....

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Here you go @moechar I know you've been patiently waiting for these pics:

View attachment 850659View attachment 850660

25 oreos per 43mm rack. 20 for double stuffed lol

Did you buy those from @Himewad ??? I didn't realize they were so realistic!

 

[Irish]

New addition to the room.

I've had the chips and photo for a while, finally got the chance over Christmas vacation to build the frame and mount it all together.

 

[sgago84]

So it begins. Let’s see how @Irish stack looks in an hour.

 

[Irish]

Gorgeous chippies, come to me....

 

[moechar]

Gorgeous chippies, come to me....

View attachment 866937

Omg is this the reveal of @sgago84 set?? Beautiful!!

Also nice card capper !!!

 

[JeepologyOffroad]

Love the t100. Who’s customs?

 

[megarises]

Gorgeous chippies, come to me....

View attachment 866937

Wait wait wait wait……you just trying to squeeze a new set past the rest of us?????

 

[Irish]

Guest set tonight. Mystery guest set

 

[JMC9389]

Healthy at the end of the rebuy period

 

[sgago84]

Gorgeous chippies, come to me....

View attachment 866937

Now give ‘‘em back.

 

[wonderpuddle]

Gorgeous chippies, come to me....

View attachment 866937

Awesome chips. Especially loving that $5k. Turned out great using the cpc color palette.

 

[sgago84]

Omg is this the reveal of @sgago84 set?? Beautiful!!

Also nice card capper !!!

@moechar Yea Matt was nice enough to let them make an appearance at The Barrel House. This may be the last time though. Apparently T100 base makes everyone play super tight! Hope fully fun was had by all though. @JeepologyOffroad ill put them on the chip DB eventually

 

[Irish]

@moechar Yea Matt was nice enough to let them make an appearance at The Barrel House. This may be the last time though. Apparently T100 base makes everyone play super tight! Hope fully fun was had by all though. @JeepologyOffroad ill put them on the chip DB eventually

@sgago84 I went back and checked through my stat sheet, we've had 5 other tourneys get to round 15. We came very close to round 16 this weekend, IIRC we stopped the clock with less than a minute left in the round to work on the chop. However, based on the TD timestamps, this was the longest game in Barrel House recorded history (not including the meetup) at 5 hours and 54 minutes. The previous record holder was our first post-COVID lockdown game last August at 5 hours 42 minutes. Congrats! NITS on parade!

 

[sgago84]

@Irish I was surprised. My last minute game was at a friends house and had 7 players. It was over at lvl 7. But I suppose we did have more entries with a decent amount of re-buys (640k+ in chips at play iirc). Now we know to make blinds more aggressive. Just not sure if early stages or late stages since we are Nits starting at Lvl 1. Good game though. Way to adapt PCF locals……

 

[Irish]

@Irish I was surprised. My last minute game was at a friends house and had 7 players. It was over at lvl 7. But I suppose we did have more entries with a decent amount of re-buys (640k+ in chips at play iirc). Now we know to make blinds more aggressive. Just not sure if early stages or late stages since we are Nits starting at Lvl 1. Good game though. Way to adapt PCF locals……

Agreed, I'll take a look at the schedule to see where it can be tweaked for a future game. Though I'm 95% sure it was the adjustment from 10k to 40k that was messing with what people were used to. If we used the same format the next few months, I think players would eventually re-adjust.

I was considering doing a deep stack / big buy-in game next month, but now I feel like we just had one lol.

edit to add: Here's the schedule I used this weekend

Round	Time (Min.)	Small Blind	Big Blind
1	20	100	200
2	20	200	400
3	20	300	600
4	20	400	800
5	20	600	1,200
6	20	800	1,600
7	20	1,000	2,000
8	20	1,500	3,000
9	20	2,000	4,000
10	20	2,500	5,000
11	20	3,000	6,000
12	20	4,000	8,000
13	20	5,000	10,000
14	20	7,000	14,000
15	20	9,000	18,000
16	20	12,000	24,000
17	20	15,000	30,000
18	20	20,000	40,000

Comparing this with my usual T10k schedule, it was actually supposed to be a little faster, lol

 

[sgago84]

I wonder if a smaller jump, T20k would have been an easier adjustment for everyone. I was overly excited and just wanted to get a ton of chips in play. Whoops. Glad it was memorable and we set a record though. Hope it holds. Now, let’s never do that again.

 

[JMC9389]

Agreed, I'll take a look at the schedule to see where it can be tweaked for a future game. Though I'm 95% sure it was the adjustment from 10k to 40k that was messing with what people were used to. If we used the same format the next few months, I think players would eventually re-adjust.

I was considering doing a deep stack / big buy-in game next month, but now I feel like we just had one lol.

edit to add: Here's the schedule I used this weekend

Round	Time (Min.)	Small Blind	Big Blind
1	20	100	200
2	20	200	400
3	20	300	600
4	20	400	800
5	20	600	1,200
6	20	800	1,600
7	20	1,000	2,000
8	20	1,500	3,000
9	20	2,000	4,000
10	20	2,500	5,000
11	20	3,000	6,000
12	20	4,000	8,000
13	20	5,000	10,000
14	20	7,000	14,000
15	20	9,000	18,000
16	20	12,000	24,000
17	20	15,000	30,000
18	20	20,000	40,000

Comparing this with my usual T10k schedule, it was actually supposed to be a little faster, lol
View attachment 867431

To make the game go a bit faster, I'd omit the 2.5k/5k and 5k/10k levels and go from 2k/4k to 3k/6k, then 4k/8k, etc. I thought the structure played well otherwise.

Something else to consider that speeds up the end of my tournaments is to make the levels after the rebuy period is over 15 minutes instead of 20. I even have 10 minute levels if the blinds get high enough. This would help hasten the small stacks to get it in sooner as they would be blinded out faster with shorter levels.

 

[sgago84]

To make the game go a bit faster, I'd omit the 2.5k/5k and 5k/10k levels and go from 2k/4k to 3k/6k, then 4k/8k, etc. I thought the structure played well otherwise.

Something else to consider that speeds up the end of my tournaments is to make the levels after the rebuy period is over 15 minutes instead of 20. I even have 10 minute levels if the blinds get high enough. This would help hasten the small stacks to get it in sooner as they would be blinded out faster with shorter levels.

Yea we could have probably skipped 2 or 3 levels. But being short stacked at the time I was glad to have them lol.

 

[Irish]

It's a wonderfully delicate balance you try to play at host. Most players will say they want a nice slow blinds schedule (especially up front) to give them a chance to play - then at the same time they'll say they don't want to play for 6 hours, lol.

View attachment 867435

I wonder if a smaller jump, T20k would have been an easier adjustment for everyone. I was overly excited and just wanted to get a ton of chips in play. Whoops. Glad it was memorable and we set a record though. Hope it holds. Now, let’s never do that again.

You're getting a taste as to why a lot of tourneys are T25 based I ran a T100 based tourney for a number of years a while back, and we used T10k starting stacks and started with blinds at 100-200 (so only 20BB to start). Essentially the same schedule we ran over the weekend, but with 10k instead of 40k stacks. IIRC it was the main blind schedule that Barry had posted on HPT. However, those games averaged 15 players and 5 rebuys a game, and typically ran about 4.5 hours. The schedule was obviously more aggressive than what we use now, but it suited the group at the time, as most had about a 4-5 hour slot to play due to the work/kids/etc. and we had a larger group playing.

A number of years later with some new players (and less folks playing), the group discussed the desire to play a less aggressive schedule (ie starting with 100-200BB). Doing that with a T100 base means you need to up the starting stack (I've found most players don't like a round where SB=BB). The issue with that is that you get soooo many more chips in play, so the later blind rounds need to be juiced up accordingly - and that is often met with shock / WTF from players (why are the blinds so high!!!). Or, you need to add an ante, which I personally hate.

And on top that, you occasionally get a game like we had last night, where you have a lot of short stack double ups (instead of knock-outs) late in the tourney, and it just drags out forever.

For this T40k schedule, I would leave the first 2 hours, and bump up some of the later rounds like Joe mentioned. That would give the desired "slow start" (200BB to start) but with higher later blinds to help finish the tourney out on time. Something like this:

And then if this still drags a bit, moving to the 15 minute levels after say level 10. Thinking back now I think that's actually what I did back in the day, prior to moving away from the T100. Keeps the transitions smoother but moves it along a little faster.

 

[CantSpellPoker]

I have no expertise in this area, I can only offer my insight as a participant and what I would prefer to see as a player.

My chief contention re: the typical 1-2 table "home" tournament is that there eventually comes a point where you look at your two cards pre-flop and say, "Well, I only have one move," and you push it all into the middle (unless you're fortunate enough to build up a sizeable stack in the early stages). As someone who was at @Irish game on Saturday and played approximately 5:45 out of the 5:54, I think most would agree when I say that out of the nearly 6 hours played, at least 3 of them were played in a zone where the chances of playing a hand through to completion without seeing an all-in were pretty slim. It's nobody's fault - tournaments are obviously designed to eventually come to an end, not go on forever. Like Matt said, we also had numerous occasions where the person who was playing for all their chips managed to win the hand, which prolonged the entire thing while a whole lot of blinds continued to get passed around the table waiting for the next shoe to drop.

The only sure thing I can say is that I want to be as deep as possible for as long as possible. I wouldn't object to shortening the levels after a certain point, or making the blind jumps bigger as you reach the deeper levels. If we're already at a point where a lot of people are only playing with 6-15 big blinds, we might as well move things along. Obviously, at that point, a huge portion of the outcome just comes down to people winning flips/races/etc., so with that, I would just say that anything that can be done, should be done to lengthen the "deeper" portion of the event where you're actually playing to build a stack that can survive the attrition of the "all-in or nothing" levels.

Like I said, there is no perfect solution that allows for a multi-hour event where there's a lot of action from start to finish, but it does seem a bit odd when you still have 6-8 players left playing, and people get shocked/surprised when two or more players are about to see a flop without someone being all-in.

 

[JMC9389]

To do what @CantSpellPoker suggests where there's less parity with stacks after the rebuy period, that would entail adding a level or two before the rebuy period ends so more players are deeper stacked going into the third hour of play.

I'm of the mind that the current structure plays just fine, even this past Saturday when there were more chips in play. The longer run times as of late can be blamed on more double ups happening on short stacks than would be expected. Except for me of course. I don't think I've hit a double up in over 6 months. You can count on me to keep the game moving

When I play tournaments with my local crew, I've had no choice but to shorten the levels so the game finishes up in 4 or 5 hours. Even 7 or 8 handed, we've had games go 6 hours. A lot of the guys still play pretty snug even until they're at 5 or 6 big blinds. Shortening the levels has helped a bit by putting more pressure on the small stacks to get it in or they get blinded out pretty quickly.

Lots of the complaints still remained thought that heads up play took too long to conclude, as usually it would end up with two large stacks still playing pretty conservatively when it got to heads up play.

Along with shortening the level times, I also enacted a "level skip" rule, where once it gets to heads up play, the level at the time finishes, but then a level is skipped each level change thereafter.

For example, let's say the blinds are 1500/3000 once it gets to heads up play. That level finishes, but instead of going to 2000/4000 as it usually would be, we go right up to 3000/6000, then 4000/8000 is skipped and we go to 6000/12000, and so on.

Every game is different and YMMV based on the player style and population, but when I have my local guys that play even nittier than this group at Matt's, I've had to make changes so we're not playing until 2am for an 8pm start. We've never had post tourney cash because of this, and it stinks because I hardly get my cash sets into play anymore!

 

[sgago84]

We are all missing the most important lesson of all, that none of us are very good at poker apparently lol. Thanks for the good feed back on my set guys. I’m happy the way they turned out. Hope you all enjoyed them too.

I appreciate the effort Matt has put Into getting his blind structure right. And thank you again Matt for putting in the work for making it work with my set. I always enjoy playing with new sets. And it was a treat to be able to see mine in action.

 

[Irish]

Appreciate the feedback @CantSpellPoker, its good to get another player's perspective from time to time.

So here are some overall thoughts:

The only sure thing I can say is that I want to be as deep as possible for as long as possible.

That was the mindset used to get to the blind structure we currently use. For reference, here it is:

The structure was set up to allow a skilled player plenty of time to wait for their spots early in the tourney, if they choose. Aside from the first level, each jump is between 25%-50% the previous level. You can play for nearly 3 tourney hours (assuming a stack around the starting stack) until you start getting to that "all-in or fold" ~10BB left position. You can see from the graph above, the structure is really flat until level 10, then it starts to increase more.

My chief contention re: the typical 1-2 table "home" tournament is that there eventually comes a point where you look at your two cards pre-flop and say, "Well, I only have one move," and you push it all into the middle (unless you're fortunate enough to build up a sizeable stack in the early stages). As someone who was at @Irish game on Saturday and played approximately 5:45 out of the 5:54, I think most would agree when I say that out of the nearly 6 hours played, at least 3 of them were played in a zone where the chances of playing a hand through to completion without seeing an all-in were pretty slim.

I was in a similar boat for about 2 hours, largely because you took for me like 20k on that nice all-in bet I folded lol. And I'd say once we got to around level 9, over half the table was in a similar situation - all sitting around the starting stack, waiting for their chance to push.

We can look at that in three different ways:

1. The structure is functioning as it should, allowing folks to hang on (if they want) and bide their time.
2. The structure is actually too flat for too long of a time. IE, it allows for too many players to hang on with a chip and a chair, and that actually stalls the tourney.
3. We don't have enough chips in play for the blinds.

So I've actually been thinking about this the past few months. What option 3 does is kick the action down the road a bit - with more chips, you have more leverage to get you deeper into the tourney, when the blinds are scheduled to start going up faster. It's essentially how our deep stack games play - minus the consideration we usually don't allow rebuys for those games. It's a potential option, but I think it'll make for longer overall tourneys once you factor in rebuys. I feel like we are currently in bullet 1, but starting to lean a bit towards bullet 2. IMHO this structure has worked pretty well the past 2-3 years where we've averaged 10-12 players with a couple of rebuys. Games have averaged about 5 hours, some shorter and some like last weekend at nearly 6. However, I'm starting to see some signs that we're growing (just a bit), and while that's awesome, I'm concerned that with more buy-ins, this will lead to consistently longer games.

I wouldn't object to shortening the levels after a certain point, or making the blind jumps bigger as you reach the deeper levels. If we're already at a point where a lot of people are only playing with 6-15 big blinds, we might as well move things along.

And that's essentially the change I'm considering. FWIW, you probably wouldn't have stayed with us too long if you joined the group a few years, we had a much more aggressive structure

These are all ratio'd to the same equivalent base so we're talking apples to apples. The purple one was our "old" 10K structure I mentioned before (T100 base), red was what we moved to about 10 years ago (moving to T1.5k allowed more play earlier), and the blue is what we have now (flattened the later stages). The funny thing though is that while the purple looks really aggressive, with the number of players we had (averaged 15+5 rebuys), games weren't much shorter than what we have now. The average was probably about a half hour shorter.

I'm not ready to change anything yet, but have considered a few tweaks at the later levels to force more action later in the tourney. It would be a combination of the blue (early) and purple (later) lines - allow for that 3ish hour period of slow increases, then ramp things up a little quicker to drive the game to a conclusion - without pushing too hard and making it a luck-fest. If we continue to grow, I think it'll be a necessary change - no one wants regular 6+ hour tourneys.

Again, appreciate the feedback and sorry for the wall of text you didn't ask for lol. If nothing else, hopefully this at least shows that I care about keeping the game going

We are all missing the most important lesson of all, that none of us are very good at poker apparently lol.

Without blowing too much sunshine up your guys asses, IMHO the real problem we have here is exactly the opposite of this....
More fish are needed.

 

[Klobberer]

Man! If the tourney took as long as it did to read the last six or seven posts, I'd definitely adjust the blind schedule!

 

[JMC9389]

Appreciate the feedback @CantSpellPoker, its good to get another player's perspective from time to time.

So here are some overall thoughts:



That was the mindset used to get to the blind structure we currently use. For reference, here it is:

View attachment 867536


View attachment 867540

The structure was set up to allow a skilled player plenty of time to wait for their spots early in the tourney, if they choose. Aside from the first level, each jump is between 25%-50% the previous level. You can play for nearly 3 tourney hours (assuming a stack around the starting stack) until you start getting to that "all-in or fold" ~10BB left position. You can see from the graph above, the structure is really flat until level 10, then it starts to increase more.


I was in a similar boat for about 2 hours, largely because you took for me like 20k on that nice all-in bet I folded lol. And I'd say once we got to around level 9, over half the table was in a similar situation - all sitting around the starting stack, waiting for their chance to push.

We can look at that in three different ways:

1. The structure is functioning as it should, allowing folks to hang on (if they want) and bide their time.
2. The structure is actually too flat for too long of a time. IE, it allows for too many players to hang on with a chip and a chair, and that actually stalls the tourney.
3. We don't have enough chips in play for the blinds.

So I've actually been thinking about this the past few months. What option 3 does is kick the action down the road a bit - with more chips, you have more leverage to get you deeper into the tourney, when the blinds are scheduled to start going up faster. It's essentially how our deep stack games play - minus the consideration we usually don't allow rebuys for those games. It's a potential option, but I think it'll make for longer overall tourneys once you factor in rebuys. I feel like we are currently in bullet 1, but starting to lean a bit towards bullet 2. IMHO this structure has worked pretty well the past 2-3 years where we've averaged 10-12 players with a couple of rebuys. Games have averaged about 5 hours, some shorter and some like last weekend at nearly 6. However, I'm starting to see some signs that we're growing (just a bit), and while that's awesome, I'm concerned that with more buy-ins, this will lead to consistently longer games.



And that's essentially the change I'm considering. FWIW, you probably wouldn't have stayed with us too long if you joined the group a few years, we had a much more aggressive structure

View attachment 867562

These are all ratio'd to the same equivalent base so we're talking apples to apples. The purple one was our "old" 10K structure I mentioned before (T100 base), red was what we moved to about 10 years ago (moving to T1.5k allowed more play earlier), and the blue is what we have now (flattened the later stages). The funny thing though is that while the purple looks really aggressive, with the number of players we had (averaged 15+5 rebuys), games weren't much shorter than what we have now. The average was probably about a half hour shorter.

I'm not ready to change anything yet, but have considered a few tweaks at the later levels to force more action later in the tourney. It would be a combination of the blue (early) and purple (later) lines - allow for that 3ish hour period of slow increases, then ramp things up a little quicker to drive the game to a conclusion - without pushing too hard and making it a luck-fest. If we continue to grow, I think it'll be a necessary change - no one wants regular 6+ hour tourneys.

Again, appreciate the feedback and sorry for the wall of text you didn't ask for lol. If nothing else, hopefully this at least shows that I care about keeping the game going



Without blowing too much sunshine up your guys asses, IMHO the real problem we have here is exactly the opposite of this....
More fish are needed.

We are all missing the most important lesson of all, that none of us are very good at poker apparently lol. Thanks for the good feed back on my set guys. I’m happy the way they turned out. Hope you all enjoyed them too.

I appreciate the effort Matt has put Into getting his blind structure right. And thank you again Matt for putting in the work for making it work with my set. I always enjoy playing with new sets. And it was a treat to be able to see mine in action.

I have to agree with Matt here. On the contrary, in general, I think that most of the player pool is really well matched and that there's not a significant disparity at all in terms of skill level. Any given night anyone can cash or win. For me, it comes in waves. I ran hot last year but haven't had a cash in quite a while, but I feel like I could say the same for just about everyone. It's cyclical for lots of the guys.

Getting a couple of LAG's that drive more action would bring more variance to the game, and with it more rebuys, but at the end of the day, I don't think that they'll win any more or less than any of the current game regulars.

 

[Irish]

Gearing up for tonight's progressive bounty game.

 

[PlaidDragon]

“Progressive” ???