I imagine the thread title alone would make some here run for the hills. It certainly seems to go against almost everything I've learned from my time on PCF and how I've tried to hone my home game to promote skilful play over shove fests. I do like to mix things up slightly with blind increases ranging from around 40-50% and starting stacks ranging from 100-200BB if for no other reason it means players (especially me!) have to adapt to different scenarios and adopt different styles of play to suit different tournaments.
Last night I hosted a tournament that was very different to our usual set up, nicknamed "The Hateful Eight" as it was my annual Western theme and the idea was to have 8 tough levels (we actually ended just into L9) and (ideally) a full table of 8 (we ended up 7 handed so I suppose you could call it the magnificent Seven
). The intention was for it to be fun and noob friendly, but also of course providing a challenge to the more seasoned of us (not that any of are that seasoned) to play something so different to our usual tourney. We also had bounties, something we only do a couple of times a year, which again I think is good for casual groups because it gives people extra chances to win money even if they don't make the bubble, and I had 3 bonuses as usual (see below) again because it gives everyone a chance to pick up some cash even if they don't finish in the money.
Buy-in was £8, starting stacks were T800 (80BB), the blind increases averaged 95% and for the first time ever I didn't limit rebuys or implement a rebuy cut-off, leaving it to players to decide when it wasn't worth it any more. Normally I would only allow one rebuy per player to give everyone a lifeline if they bust out early on a bad beat, not to promote loose play or reward deep pockets that others may not be able to compete with; but as I say, this was a once a year thing that I thought I'd try out.
Here is the blinds structure:
With the stacks pretty short I had guestimated 3 rebuys each, so a total of 27, however we only had a total 17. I somehow manage to not rebuy at all, most others rebought once or twice and one guy rebought 7 times
As you can probably imagine during the later levels rebuys were happening between almost every hand until it became totally futile.It was certainly different, and I couldn't play my usual tournament style, there were far too many all-ins for my liking as people's stack value depleted rapidly, but in fairness the more skilled players who usually make it to the final few were there at the end so it couldn't have been too much of a luck fest. And here's the thing, my players absolutely loved it
As I said above I think rebuys have a specific purpose but last night people went crazy and they loved having the option of just rebuying if their coin flip didn't go their way. And of course it bloated the prize pool!Not sure what you guys would have made of it and I'm not convinced I want to do it all that often, but I can't deny it was absolutely one of the more fun nights we've had.
I did come armed with £40 worth of pound coins but even then I realised early on I'd made a rod for my own back 
I've already decided next year's Western theme is called "A Fistful of Dollars" so we aren't tied to specific, awkward numbers that constantly need change 
£10 buy-ins/re-buys will be much more manageable and T1k will seem like a fine fit.
