What's a good starting blind for casual poker tournament

[LS20]

lets say you have a 6 player table, and want to play for 2-3 hour

each player has 100 "units" of money. what is a good blind to start it off with... 1/2 or 2/4 or something else?

i think we've been setting ours too low that its too easy for everyone to see the flop

 

[sixone]

1/2 is reasonable. Do you have a structure to increase them periodically?

 

[KarmaPolice]

google is your friend.

but...

100 with 1/2 start isnt that bad of a way to do it. The bar I play at on mondays has the same starting amount of chips. The shorter you want to play the shorter you make the blind periods.

 

[toolboxolio]

Originally posted by: LS20
lets say you have a 6 player table, and want to play for 2-3 hour

each player has 100 "units" of money. what is a good blind to start it off with... 1/2 or 2/4 or something else?

i think we've been setting ours too low that its too easy for everyone to see the flop

there is no point doing 2/4 to start if you have 100 chips per player.

do 1/2 so that people have a good relaxed time and you have many players in each hand initially into the game. Raise the blind (double) every 15-20 minutes.

By the end of the game the conversations that have started while things were relaxed (in the low blinds) can still interest the players that aren't in the game any longer.

I used to do a $10 buy-in holdem tourny every friday night when I was in gainesville. It was tons of fun since all the players played poker as a hobby. Usually had 8-20 players each time we did it (depending on if there was a gator game or not).

I miss playing poker now that I am soflo (graduated).

 

[Ameesh]

give people 800-1000 units and use the following blind structure:

1/2 - 15 minutes
2/5 - 15 minutes
5/10 - 15 minutes

chip up (possibly group into one table if you have 10 people or less)

10-25 - 20 minutes
25-50 - 20 minutes
50 - 100 - 20 minutes
100 - 200 - 20 minutes

you'll probably be in heads up by now.

this works great for 6-10 players on 1 table or 16-20 players on two tables

 

[Ameesh]

oh and chip denominations should be

1 (white) , 5 (red), 25 (green), 100 (black) (just like a casino)

after chip up change 1 --> 500

 

[NL mkII]

Originally posted by: LS20
lets say you have a 6 player table, and want to play for 2-3 hour

each player has 100 "units" of money. what is a good blind to start it off with... 1/2 or 2/4 or something else?

i think we've been setting ours too low that its too easy for everyone to see the flop

starting at 1/2 is perfect to be honest, you certainly arent setting things too low. A lot of poker games would start off even smaller, I think the best way is to start off with something like 300 units and play 2/4 at the start but it can depend on how your game plays. My advice for you to have a decent structure would be...

100 units for 6 people
1/2
2/4
3/6
5/10 (you can remove the single units here and chip up if you want)
8/15 (make this level 10/15 if you want to chip up at 5/10)
10/20 (otherwise chip up here)
15/30
20/40
Up the blinds every 20 minutes at the end the hand and restart the clock at the start of the next hand, this way the intervals will actually be slightly longer than 20 minutes and you should hit that 2-3 hour target you are looking for. If you find it isnt quite lasting long enough then add in a 4/8 level and make the final level 15/30, that should be more than enough. There won't ever be any need for you to go past the 20/40 level either as the game will just be all in or fold by that point anyway.

You say that its too easy for everyone to see the flop? That just depends on how aggressive you guys are preflop! If people are raising up to around the 8-10 mark before the flop then it becomes pretty tough to see the flop without a decent hand.


One final point... don't do what Ameesh says! You'll end up with a game where noone really gives a ****** early on as even a big pot wont really make much difference. This is of course only true if you are playing with semi decent players, if you are playing with a bunch of morons people will end up playing pots for their entire stack whatever the blinds

If you want any more advice give me a shout