Home game buy-ins/blind structure

[Dodoubled]

So I did something tonight I haven't done in a long, long time ... I bailed on a friend's home poker tournament that I had been looking forward to for several weeks.

Here's why: I was stuck at work about an hour late, and when I called to see how things were progressing, I was told I could still make it in for the end of the rebuy period (entry was $50, and rebuys were allowed through the first three blind levels, and blinds increased every half hour). Everything seemed cool.

I asked them what level they were on, and he said "20/40." I then asked him how many chips each player started with, and he said, "500." He then said the game started at 10/20.



So if I bought in, assuming the next level kicked to 30/60, I'd be sitting, basically, with nine BB -- already a shove/fold situation in most cases. And even if I had bought in at the beginning, I'm only sitting with 25 BB, which seems incredibly thin.
So I said, "No, thanks," and went to the bar to watch Billy Packer declare, "This game is over," at 7:39 remaining in the first half of Kansas/UNC.

Anyhow, just for future reference, when you guys run your own home games (and especially tournaments), how do you structure them? How many chips is each player allotted, how quickly do you tend to increase blinds, and at what increments? Do you keep the increases consistent (say, 10/20 to 20/40 to 30/60 to 40/80), or do you prefer bigger leaps? I'd like to get some feedback on this so I can pass it on. Something just didn't seem right about tonight.

[Robbr25]

We always start with 2000, or 2500.
Starting the blinds at 25/25 or 25/50
going up every 12-15 min.
Usually the blinds go 25/50, 50/100, 100/200, (sometimes 150/300), 200/400, 400/800, etc.
Usually doubling every one except the 150/300 level.
We don't usually do antes because it gets too complicated in a home game.

[Robbr25]

Btw 500 to start with those blinds sucks.

[Robbie Robb]

Here's the latest blind structure that we just switched to in our monthly game:
Level Blind
1 25/50
2 50/100
3 75/150
4 100/200
5 100/200/25
6 125/250/25
7 150/300/50
8 200/400/50
9 250/500/100
10 300/600/100
11 400/800/150
12 500/1000/150

A decision was made by most to drop levels 6 & 9 though. That's with a 2500 chip starting amount and 20 minute levels (with a 10 minutes break after every 3 levels). With a 15-person avg. we find that the game is usually about 2.5-3 hours.

We're going to run a rebuy tourney a little later this year with a heavily modified structure. Probably 1000 starting chips, 1000 rebuys with a final add-on of 1000 (or maybe 1500). I haven't determined the blind levels yet for it yet but they will probably be different than above.

[Invigilator]

We vary our structure fairly often.

2000 starting with 25/50 first level, up to 10K starting 100/200 first level.

We generally do a freeze-out and I structure the (20 minute) levels based on when we want the tournament to end. If we start at 8 pm and want to be done by 11:30, I estimate the total ships that will be in play and make sure that we get to a point where the BB is 5-10 % of the chips in play around 11:00-11:15

Rebuy's are much harder to estimate, but we will usually start with 2000 in chips and play 25/50 50/100 75/150 for the first hour, end the rebuy period and continue with a doubling structure from 100/200 after that.

as a general rule, I like 20 minute levels, and for my guests to start with around 40-50 BB.

[Dodoubled]

Thanks, all.

All of these seem more in tune to what I'm used to playing. Back at work today, one of my buddies, who was at the game, said, "Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking."

[Akverno]

The home games I play in out here are a different structure than I've played before. The starting chip count is 2500 (10x100 20x50 20x25) and the blinds go up whenever anyone is knocked out. The blind structure is fairly odd as well,

25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
125/250
150/300 and so on, no antes are added.

Sometimes we allow rebuys until 2200, if this occurs the games actually finish much faster as the guys I play against will rebuy even if the blinds are at 200/400 or I've even seen someone rebuy at 300/600.

The first few times I played this structure I couldn't stand it, but as I've gotten used to it, the levels are lengthy and it allows for a good player to consistently (week after week) chip up until the blinds are higher and start putting pressure on the short stacks.