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Question

I am starting a regular texas holdem tourny between friends once or twice a month and the buy in we decided is $40 but cant decide how many chips to distribute to each player and what denominatioin..There will be between 5 and 8 players.Thanks

Answer 1

HomePokerTourney.com is a great resource for running tournaments. As a rule of thumb, you should generally give each player 50X the initial big blind. For the home tourneys I run we usually start blinds at 25-50 and each player gets a starting stack of 2500. You can also get by with less chips if you change the values of lower denomination chips when taken out of play. Once blinds go up to 100-200 you no longer need a 25 chip, so take those out of play and make them worth 1000 or 5000, whatever works.

Answer 2

The simplest option is to make it a cash game. $40 buy in, blinds at 50c / $1, rebuy if you want to (if you have less than $10). Even make it 25c / 50c if you want deeper stacks (in relation to blinds).

The advantage of this over tournament play is people can leave when they want and if someone is knocked out after 20 minutes, they don't have to sit around for a couple of hours waiting for it all to be over.

All you have to do is get some chips worth 25c, some worth $1, and you are pretty much done.

If you insist on doing tournament play you could pick a blind structure from one of the common poker sites, for example poker stars (see link). Set a time for the blind limits, say 15-30 minutes per level. Start with $1,500 in chips as follows:

20 x $5 = $100
20 x $10 = $200
10 x $50 = $500
7 x $100 = $700

Pick the colors depending on how your chips are. If you have a lot of black and white maybe use those for the smaller denominations for example.

Ideally you'll want to get some kind of kitchen timer to time the blind rounds. It's a little more professional than specifying a time for the blinds to increase and then everyone forgets the time and the blinds go up late.

With five players you could probably set the prize structure to $150 for first and $50 for second place.

With eight players you could probably pay three places. $180 for first, $80 for second and $60 for third. Or just do winner takes all.

Hope you have fun.

Answer 3

We do 1500 in chips and start at 5-10, but double the blinds most levels. 15 minute blinds are fine
5-10
10-20
20-40
40-80
color up all 5 and 10 dollar chips (race)
75-150
125-250
200-400
300-600
500-1000
usually done by 300/600 or 500/1000
this is 2 hrs and 15 minutes .. not bad

Answer 4

$1500 would be a good amount to start with. Blinds start at 25/50 and go up every 20 min. Have fun and good luck.