Playing Tournaments at Home
There is an increased interest in poker lately among the general population. People are watching poker on TV and many are playing poker both at casinos and online. This has also resulted in people wanting to host home games or even to hold local tournaments. For those who have never hosted such an endeavor there are a few questions that need to be answered before starting.
What Equipment is Required?
Tables
You need a table to play poker on. The table can be a simple make do affair such as kitchen table or folding card table, or at the high end a custom table made of fine quality woods and costing $3,000 or more. There are, of course, many tables available for much less (10 player hold'em tables are available from $250).
Cards
You need cards to play with and there are many standard poker size playing cards to choose from. You will need more than one deck of cards, as they will have to be changed at the first sign of wear (nicks, folds, scratches, and so on can give players an unfair advantage). The number of decks you will need to purchase will depend upon, among other things, the number of players playing and the rate the cards will be defaced with use. Cards are available in single decks (costing about $2.50) to bulk sets of 144 decks (costing around $360). Buy enough so that you have the ability to change them as required.
Poker Chips
How many chips do you need, and what kind should you get? It depends on how prestigious you wish to make the event. The chips are just a way of keeping track of who is winning and as such backroom money tournament games have been played using nothing more elaborate than two rolls of quarters we borrowed from the house. Basically you can make do with just about anything, just make sure all of the players understand the value of the tokens used. However, when you are going to the trouble of inviting others to play it is nice to have some type of poker chips to play with.
There are several types of poker chips available ranging from cheap lightweight plastic chips to custom designed heavy clay chips. The cheaper plastic chips are available in most department stores and the better ones are fine for small friendly home games. For small tournaments or for anyone wishing to play with better equipment clay chips are recommended. Clay chips come in several weights, textures, and of course price range. A set of low end 9.5 gram "diamond" chips is considered the minimum while glossier 11.5 gram or even 13.5 gram chips are nicer to hold and play with as they slide much easier, but they aren't as easy on the wallet. Buying a set of chips can certainly be an investment, and part of the decision comes down to how much you are willing to "invest", how much you wish to impress, and how much your players expect from you.
I bought the lower end chips because I wanted to have them customized, not so much for the sake of my ego, but because I never wanted to hear someone accusing another player of bringing their own chips to the table and padding their stack with them. The extra money was worth avoiding that potential headache, even if it did cause me to buy "down" a little. Also, in order to make the most use out of my chips, I got them without denominations so that I had the option of making red any denomination I wanted, depending on the tournament. I also picked up some standard, distinct colors because one of the guys in our group is color-blind, and it is very important that he be able to tell the difference between the chips at a glance.
The number of chips to buy will depend on the number of players you'll be inviting to play. For simple one table tournaments in your rec. room a 300 chip set works well, as long as the number of players is eight or less. When the number of players is more than eight you should buy more chips. Consider getting 500 chips for ten player games and 1000 chips for games or tournaments of up to two dozen players (that's three tables of 8, a nice round number). A 1,500 chip set works nicely for up to 40 players, although more could be accommodated if necessary.
I suggest four colored chip sets. Most come with enough of each color to make things easy on the host. A chip set consisting of 40% red, 40% green, 10% black and 10% purple is a good start.
Other Accessories
While not necessary you may want to purchase other poker accessories such as card shufflers, card shoes, or buttons to show the blind and/or dealer positions.
Other Considerations
Seating Arrangements
Players should be seated randomly, and any method that ensures a random seating at a table is acceptable. One method of making the seating random is for each chair at a table to be marked with a number, and then marking each table with a suit. Use a standard set of cards, put them in a pile to shuffle them, and then have each player pick a card. Each player then goes to the table and seat according to the card he/she has selected. For instance, a player may draw seat 4 at the table Clubs.
Of course it's easy to create other methods of randomly seating players, just try to make sure it is truly random.
Player Movement
In hosting multi-table tournaments as play goes on and players are eliminated the tables will become unbalanced. To keep the tables balanced players will need to be moved from one table to another. For example; in a tournament starting with two 10 man tables, if one table goes down to 8 players while the other remains at 10, the time has come to rebalance the tables. Rebalancing is done by moving players from fuller tables to tables with fewer players. It is best to keep players at the same table position, so, if possible move player #3 from Table B to position #3 at table A if that position has been vacated. This keeps players from landing on consecutive blinds or buttons.
Although it is desirable to move players from and into similar positions, there is no hard, fast rule for moving players.
Payouts
There is no such thing as a standard payout chart. The host uses whatever percentages the players like, just making sure they know and agree on the percentages before starting.
Another thing that must be decided upon in advance is what to do in the event that two players bust out on the same hand. For instance; in the case where there are three players going into a hand and one player wins the hand ending up with all of the chips. How do you decide who is the second place winner and who is the third place winner? One method of deciding is to award the higher place finish to the player who began the hand with the larger chip total. Another method to resolving the prize split is to combine the prizes between the two players and then let each player receive half of the total. In our example you would combine the second and third place monies and then award each player half of the total.
It is not unusual for players to make "deals" when they see a potential problem coming up. For instance in the above situation, if there was no rule dealing with the elimination of two players at one time, the last two players will often agree to the method they feel is fairest.
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