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Hosting Poker Tournament

  • 09-05-2013 11:14pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33


    Hey me and a two lads are thinking about holding a poker tournament in our area as there are none really! just wondering has anyone done it to make money?

    We went into to the Gardai and they said it was illegal to host a gambling tournament to pocket any profit?
    Anyone have any way around that as we are hoping to make some money?
    Any help would be greatful
    cheers


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 241 ✭✭Gweedling


    I looked into it a bit a few years back when pub tournaments were all the rage. The loophole around it is that it has to be an outside company hosting it (i.e, not the pub themselves, if the pub did it to make a profit it'd be illegal). When the gardai said it's illegal to host gambling to turn a profit, that's only if you're playing against the house (blackjack/roulette etc). By hosting a tournament you're providing a service - Tables, tournament clock, chips, possibly dealers, that kind of thing. Once you and your mate/any other employees aren't playing in the game, there's nothing wrong.

    Talk to pubs/hotels in the area and ask about a discount/freebie on a function room once a week/every two weeks, they'll be interested as they can get 20-100 drinkers on an otherwise quiet night during the week.

    It's risky to start up out of the blue unless you're sure you'll have a solid regular customer base.

    Outlays before you even host your first game:
    Function room hire
    Poker tables
    Quality Poker chips
    Chip stickers (labels with company logo - I have some at home with the software, I'll let you know when I get home from work)
    Printer ink for above chip stickers
    a van to drive tables & chipsets around
    Poker tournament software for laptop (possibly a projector if the venue can't provide one)
    Advertising

    These can cost you a fortune to get set up, so you'll need to be very confident that you'll get a solid regular turnout for the games, which means you'll need tournament organising experience - starting stack, clock, structure. Customers won't come back to play again if the game turns into a crapshoot after half an hour.

    You'll also need decent business management to make sure you turn a profit in the long run - 50/75/100% of reg fees out of first ten tournaments to pay for all the above expenses, will it make enough?

    If you can get a steady turnover of customers for the first six months you should be able to turn a profit in the long run, but "making money" from the outset is nigh on impossible.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33 deccydohc


    just gona do it in the local pub, they have chips and that, if we get more that 17 people in we are going to break even, think we are getting around 40 though. Do you know any good poker software?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 241 ✭✭Gweedling


    I bought the home edition of tournamentclock.com, excellent software, about £40-£50 iirc. There are more upmarket versions for official pub/casino games, but for 20-40 people, the home edition is fine and quite user friendly. www.tournamentclock.com/


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33 deccydohc


    You seem to know what you're talking about mate, cheers for all the helping, one last question about blinds.
    Gona be 40 people max with either 10000 or 11000 chips, with early bird
    5-100 chips
    5- 200 chips
    3-500 chips
    2/3-1000 chips
    1- 5000 chips

    blinds start at 100/200 and go up every 15 minutes?
    100/200
    200/300
    300/400
    400/500
    Break
    500/700
    600/800
    700/900
    800/1000
    900/1100
    1000/1200
    Break
    1200/1500
    1500,1800
    1800/2100
    2100/2400
    2400/2700
    Break and take away 100 and 200 chips?
    3000/5000 ante START AT:500
    4000/6000
    6000/8000
    8000/10000
    10000/12000
    12000/14000
    15000/20000
    20000/25000

    starts at half 8, want it done by half 1 or 2
    what dya think?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 241 ✭✭Gweedling


    I just spent the past two hours writing a stupidly long post on how to run a pub poker tournament, then my browser decided it didn't like my ramblings and wiped the lot. I'm going to smoke, then scream profanaties at the sky, then I'll be back to try again. In notepad first.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,476 ✭✭✭Samba


    Gl with the venture, concentrate on running a good game while making it as enjoyable as possible for players, pub games are all about atmosphere and good craic, if you have that at your games, word should spread.

    I've a tournament clock on my site you can use for free, you just need to create an account to set up advanced settings for it, it goes into full screen mode once you start the tourney, see here.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 968 ✭✭✭the_pits


    deccydohc wrote: »
    You seem to know what you're talking about mate, cheers for all the helping, one last question about blinds.
    Gona be 40 people max with either 10000 or 11000 chips, with early bird
    5-100 chips
    5- 200 chips
    3-500 chips
    2/3-1000 chips
    1- 5000 chips

    blinds start at 100/200 and go up every 15 minutes?
    100/200
    200/300
    300/400
    400/500
    Break
    500/700
    600/800
    700/900
    800/1000
    900/1100
    1000/1200
    Break
    1200/1500
    1500,1800
    1800/2100
    2100/2400
    2400/2700
    Break and take away 100 and 200 chips?
    3000/5000 ante START AT:500
    4000/6000
    6000/8000
    8000/10000
    10000/12000
    12000/14000
    15000/20000
    20000/25000

    starts at half 8, want it done by half 1 or 2
    what dya think?

    I run pub poker game and getting 20/30 players each week....took me long long time to get players to come to game, but word of mouth is a great help I start my game at 9pm and its over by 12.30/1am which is ok with pub landlord......My starting stack is 10k with 12mins blinds and I start blinds at 25/50, 50/100,150/300,200/400,500/1000,800/1500,1000,2000 etc ....get rid of your 200 chips .....completely useless. Please note your big blind should be double of your small blind


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 241 ✭✭Gweedling


    Ok make a cup of tea and sit down, this may take a while. Let's start from the ground up. The_pits is right, your big blind has to be double the small blind for starters, that goes for any game type.

    First up, what's your buy in/reg fee? How is 17 people registered going to break even for you? This is an important starting point, as people playing a €10 rebuy means a much looser game than a €120 freezeout, and that can dictate the pace/quality of the entire game, which we'll get to later.

    Let's assume the buy in is anywhere between €20+5 - €50+5. €5 is a good reg fee for these levels, as €2-3 isn't enough to make any money, and €10 is way too high a take, as punters will be spending more money to enter a game of less value. A 10% rake is usually standard for games of €50+ but as it's just a small friendly pub game I doubt you'll be setting the buy in that high.

    Next up, what type of game are you planning? Straight freezeout, double chance, Double stack, rebuy, one rebuy/addon or multiple rebuys? Your starting stack/blind structure will depend on these things.


    Like the guys above, I'd recommend starting blinds of 25/50, makes things much easier to manage in the long run.

    25/50
    50/100
    75/150 (Maybe)
    150/300
    Break (maybe)
    200/400
    250/500 (maybe)
    300/600
    Break
    400/800
    500/1k (possible antes starting here @100)
    600/1200
    Break
    800/1600
    1k/2k
    1200/2400
    Break
    1500/3k
    2k/4k
    3k/6k
    5k/10k
    8k/16k
    10k/20k

    That structure will take about 5-6 hours. Bear in mind that pub poker tournaments never start on time, so If you want the game to start at half eight, tell people the game starts at half seven.

    WRT blind levels, personally I hate 15 minute levels, Blinds go up way too quick, turns the game into a crapshoot too early and no one enjoys the game. 20 minutes is better. A lot of games I've played had 15 minute levels for the first hour/4 levels, then 20 minute levels thereafter.

    To make things easier for organising a game and calculations and stuff, instead of measuring stacks in chips, measure them in multiples of the big blind. This is very important for maintaining a good game structure later in the game.

    For a straight freezeout, you want to give people a starting stack of about 200bb/10k. 200bb is the around the middle of deepstack territory. Gives people plenty of chips to play with, yet not so many that you'll still have forty people left in the game at midnight.

    double chance or one rebuy/add on - starting stack of 5k/100bb, option of additional 5k.

    multiple rebuys - 50bb/2.5k. Good players will accumulate chips, mediocre ones will get eaten up by the blinds and forced to rebuy, rubbish players will lose their chips quickly enough and rebuy. (Note - only hold a rebuy tourney for buy ins from about €10-20)



    This is where we go a bit in-depth for the game structure side of things. Brace yourselves! As a tournament organiser your main focus is a good game structure so you get repeat customers. One thing to recognise is that after the game starts, you don't have much control over how fast the game will progress. We're going to do a little maths to monitor the quality of two hypothetical games with the exact same game structure, but different outcomes.

    The game will be a €20+5 freezeout, T10k stack, 40 players.
    40 players x T10,000 = T400,000 in play.

    Now, our first game is full of tight nitty players. No one is making any moves, no one is being flamboyant with their chips. In the first hour of play, only 2 players have been eliminated.

    T400k divided by 38 players means an average stack of 10525. "Not bad!", you say, but in the first hour of 15 minute levels, the big blind has now leapt to 300, meaning the average stack is now only 35 big blinds. This is a massive drop in one hour of Poker. The game will turn into a crapshoot very quickly at this rate.
    Hour 2, three more players gone, 400k\35 players = 19bb average stack. Moving very quickly into shove/fold mode after only 2 hours.


    Our second game is full of loose agressive players, with chips flying all over the place. In the first hour here, 8 players have been eliminated.
    T400k/32 players = T12.5k average stack. With a 300bb after hour 1, that's 41.5bb average. Much better, much more play!

    Both of these examples are very rough guesstimates of a game turnout. They're the extreme ends of the tight & loose scales, but it's a good example of how games can change depending on the players, with no input at all from the tournament director. It'll take a few games with you monitoring and watching the play, but after a while you can tweak the structure a little to suit the game more.

    If the game is too tight, you can remove a level or two (e.g going from 200-400 straight to 300/600, ignoring 250/500), you can also implement antes later in the game. With blinds at 500/1k, a 100 ante is recommended. An ante of 10% of a big blind with a full ring of 9/10 players means there's effectively an extra big blind in the pot before anyone sees a card. This makes the pot much more appealing, and also gives the nits a kick to get a move on, as T100 per hand will slowly eat into your stack.

    If the game is too loose with people getting eliminated all over the shop, you can slow the game down by increasing the clock to 30min levels, or adding in an extra level, like 600/1200 or 1400/2800.

    If you want the game to end at half one you want the final table to start about half twelve. That means you want 30-32 people eliminated between half eight to half twelve. 32 people in four hours Is doable with decent stack/clock management.

    Again, don't expect the game to be perfect first time round, it'll take a few attempts to tweak it so it's just right. You'll also learn the correct times to colour up and put in breaks etc. To start, put in a break every hour/90 minutes.

    Lastly, you said the pub already has chips. Are they custom? do they have stickers? If they're just bog standard indistinctive chips, what's stopping me from bringing in a few 5k chips from my own case at home? Check out chipcustomizer.com
    Their Ebay page

    Custom chips are a must have, the labels I got from here are easy to use, €23 for the basic starter kit. Hundreds and thousands of templates and colours to use, so customize them for the pub/your own company name if you get more into it and expand! Heavy on the printer ink though, so you might want to stock up :)

    I think that's it, if there's anything else I remember I'll add it in. Best of luck!
    BTW, where's the pub? If it's anywhere near me I'll pop down, haven't had a good pub game in a long time :)


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