Poker Tourney
 

I have a simple question and hope for a simple answer. Well first of all I have a couple of friends that are coming over this weekend to play in a poker tourney. The first question is if we have 9 guys and they all pay 5 dollar buy in plus an extra $5 what should the pay off be? Also should there be any amount of chips I should start with or just have the amount equal for all 9? We have had a game before and we just split the pot with the first and second guy. The first got maybe 5 more than the second place guy. So any suggestions?

My thoughts
 

I think your saying 9 people x $5 = $45 + $5 to make it an even $50. Right?
If so I'd suggest payout to be 1st - $25, 2nd - $15, 3rd - $10.
I don't really know about the chip count other than all should definitely get the same. More the better I say.

Ya, $50 is right. Sounds like a good idea. Plus I usually just give everyone the same amount and use all the chips I can.

Heres another question. What about blinds? Last time we started at lik 10/20 then went up every 30 minutes. The tourney that we excpted to take along time only took a bout 3 to 4 hours. Should we slow the blinds down or what?

50 buck pot, 1st should be 35 second 15

starting chips depends on how long you want the tourny to run for.

I like 25/50 blinds, 4k in chips to start and 20 minute rounds

I would run it like a sng blinds up every 12 mins 10-20 doubling each time
1st25 2nd 15 3rd 10. last max 2hrs. That why you can play 2 or 3:D

i think he wants to lengthen the game not shorten it... notice how he said should we slow the blinds down.

As Zy mentioned - stacks and blinds depends on how long you want the tourney to run. Nikki & I run a monthly game and we've been tweaking the structure each month. I *think* we've finally arrived at something that everyone is happy with. It goes a little something like this... (hit it!)

# of players: 14-20 (we run two tables to start)
buyin: $10
stack size: 2000
blinds: Okay, this is where we go WAY off the normal (read: casino) path. This was in response to overall player recommendation. We bump up the blinds to the next level whenever someone is knocked out, or one hour, whichever comes first. We find that it's pretty much a dead heat for the first increase but then people start to drop rather rapidly :) These also means that we could skip levels completely.
levels: 10/20; 20/40; 30/60; 40/80; 50/100; at this point we do a chip swap dumping 10s and 20s, swapping them out for 100s and 25s. Carrying on: 75/150; 100/200; 150/300; 200/400. Now we start to see some antes: 200/400/25; 250/500/50; 300/600/75; 400/800/100; 500/1000/125; 600/1200/150; 700/1400/175; 800/1600/200.
Note: we cap the blinds at their max level when we're down to three players. With 14-20 people we find the game usually lasts about 3-4.5 hours, depending on the night.

As for payouts, anything < 15 people is three payouts: 50%, 25%, 15%. 15 or more we bump it up to four spots (and I let The Tournament Director software figure out the payouts).

i think he wants to lengthen the game not shorten it... notice how he said should we slow the blinds down.
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I did not see that in the post

This ought to help

its in the 3rd post