The small cardroom where I played poker back in college once tried out an experimental tournament format that we all found pretty fun and interesting, but it never caught on.
Whereas we were used to typical tournaments with 12-minute levels and blinds that go out in normal intervals, this tournament had 40-minute levels, but the blinds went something like this:
25/50
300/600
4000/8000
Some players got comfortable with the 40-minute levels, but the savvy players knew they had to make moves to grow their stacks. Once those blinds up, everyone's stacks were getting decimated.
So my question to you. Would you play a tournament like this?
There are differences between structures that combine smaller increases / shorter levels, medium-sized increases / levels, and larger increases / longer levels, but at the end of day, they all play out pretty much the same way (given similar starting stack sizes) -- at least for those players who are savvy enough to anticipate what's coming (regardless of the structure itself).
I have previously posted structure examples, comparing the those that range from < 20% average increases with short levels, up to those with 100% or even 200% increases (but with levels that are 5x or 10x longer). They all end up at the same places at different points in the tournament journey, but take different paths to get there. None are really 'better' than others; it's just at best a personal preference.
But your structure example above is fundamentally flawed, imo. Working backwards, here it is expanded, using 20-minute levels:
25/50 (---)
75/175 (233% increase)
300/600 (267% increase)
1100/2200 (264% increase)
4000/8000 (267% increase)
or further expanded, with 10-minute levels:
25/50 (---)
50/100 (100%)
100/200 (100%)
175/350 (75%
300/600 (71%)
600/1200 (100%)
1100/2200 (83%)
2000/4000 (82%)
4000/8000 (100%)
So even expanded to super-short 10-minute blind levels, the structure still nearly doubles the blinds at every increase (averaging 89%). That is way too fast for my personal liking for a super-short level event, and scales upwards to astronomical increases compared to the blind level lengths.
Although the original structure uses relatively uniform and consistent blind increases, it is simply too fast to allow meaningful and skillful play.
And as a result, I would not play. But I would (and have) played in similar events with longer levels or smaller increases -- so long as they are consistently-sized -- and not so fast as to be virtual luckfests.
