The rounds are twenty minutes each and the blinds go up after each round. You can purchase an inexpensive digital cooking timer for about five dollars to keep tack of the time. With this structure a limit tournament will last 3 – 4 hours.
Dealing
We rotate the deal during the beginning of the tournament. As players get knocked out someone will usually volunteer to be the dealer. If you plan to do this you should have a dealer button handy to use.
Moving Players
If you have more than one table you will need to balance them as players get knocked out. If there are more than two players missing from one table you will need to move one from the table with the most players. The responsibility should fall on the person running the tournament. When moving players, try to move the player in the same relative position as the empty seat. Some tournaments will deal a card to each player at the table with the most players and the one with the high card must move.
Coloring up Chips
There are usually 20 players in our home game so after round 5 we color up the green chips. With 10 players or less you probably don’t need to do this but with 20 there are a lot of green chips on the table. We give the players either black chips or red chips to take the green chips out of play. (I.e. if they get one black for each 4 green chips or a red if they had 20 green etc.)
If there are odds green chips 1-2-or 3 we race off for them. Each player is dealt one card for each odd chip they have. If they have one chip they get one card, 2 chips they get two cards. You add up all the odds chips if there are 8 green chips that equal 2 black chips. The players with the two highest cards get one black chip a piece. No player can win more than one chip in the race so if a player has two of the highest cards you them got to the next highest to determine who gets the next chip
Rules
Rules should be discussed ahead of time. You can download the Home Poker Tournament Rule book in a PDF document you can print out and keep on hand.
Home tournaments are great fun. Why not give it a try?
Until Next time remember:
Luck comes and goes.....Knowledge Stays Forever.