How should I set up this poker party?

Question

My wife and I are having a surprise poker / birthday party for a friend. Her friends range from beginners to pretty serious. We want to keep the games light so we're not sure we want to have everyone play for money. Instead, we're thinking of having everyone "buy in" for prizes which will basically cover the cost of the prizes themselves. (For example 10 people buy in with $10 and we buy $100 worth of prizes.) Problem is, we don't know how many will actually buy in. The other option is to have them all buy in and play for cash, but we don't want too big of a buy in to deter anyone and don't want it so small that you can't even figure out the chip count. Does anybody have any ideas on how to approach this? Thanks.

Answer 1

you need to find out how many people are actually going to play. If it is more than 14 people, then have 2 tables. If it is 6-12 people, you can do with one table. This is assuming you are playing No Limit Texas Hold em..which is the most popular game now. The buy in should be soemthing that everyone is comfortable losing. So let's say 5 dollars with 10 people. That's a 50 dollar prize pool. You can have Top 4 people get paid....something like 35%, 35%, 15%, 10% of the prize pool..or something like that.

Now you need someone who knows the rules well and can determine side pots, burning each card before the flop, turn and river....

Usually small buy in tournaments start with 2000 chips. You can start at 25-25 blinds..and go up every 15-20 minutes, depending on how much time you guys have.
a good structure would be
25-25
25-50
50-100
150-200
300-600
etc etc

About the cards, you should have 2 decks at each table so that someone is shuffling one deck, while one is in play.

You should have a cut card (usually 2 jokers taped together) as the bottom card so that no one sees the bottom card (or you can do away with this since it's just a home game)

Designate someone the tournament director if there are any disputes, their decision will be the "rule" if there are any disagreements.....

any more help, just pm me....good luck and have fun!

Answer 2

I have an entire section dedicated to starting your own poker tournaments on the Church website:

http://www.church-of-texas-holdem.com/how-to-set-up-poker-tournament.html

There's even a link to poker supplies.

As for the prizes/buy in: you don't say what the occasion is, but I'd shoot for $25, converted directly into prizes. Don't be too cheesy with those either; gift cards, such as Chapters or a department store, go a lot further than some knick-knack nobody really wants.

If it's a birthday or wedding, $25 is nothing really.

Answer 3

The chip count will be the same no matter how much you buy in for. The buy in is the prize pool and should be divided up for top 3 payouts for 9 or 10 people.

Answer 4

If you want it to be fun, you don't need a buy-in at all. Just have some fun prizes for the top N places. Have some other goofy awards as well, such as "Worst beat award" or "Best bluff" or "Best impression of a famous poker pro."

Just give everyone 500 chips to start and let them have fun.

Answer 5

My opinion.... play a cash game instead of tournament style. Let them buy in with as little as $5.00 worth of chips and set your blinds up and .25 and .50 cents. At least with a cash game, they have the option of walking away whenever they want instead of sitting there until they either win it all or lose it all.

Answer 6

I'll give you some sites that have excellent information on running a home game, I myself always play for cash and i have never played for prizes so i can't help you out there, but go to www.homepokertourny.com or homepokergame.com they have good tips and rules on running a game, good luck.