Home game blinds

corblimey

I'm considering organising a home game for a few work mates. I have everything I need, but the only thing I'm not sure about is how regularly to increase the blinds. There's a thread here somewhere that says one of the organised casino games had them increasing every 25 mins.

I just don't want people to be sent out on blinds alone, but I also want to keep it interesting. I figure 6-8 folks probably 20 to play, 10 rebuy, etc, if that's any help.

(forgive me if this is a dumb question, this is my first time trying to organise a proper home game)

mewso

What we have done in the past is have the first 3 levels at 30 minutes with rebuys allowed during those 3 levels. It means everyone gets at least an hour and a half. Then a top-up and from level 4 on 20 minutes a go.
It's important to increase the amount of chips you get for each rebuy. The best way is to set the top-up and increase the rebuy chips until they reach the same amount as the top-up in a similar fashion to the Fitz.
e.g. Start with 1000 chips with rebuy 1 being 1000, rebuy 2 being 1500, 3 being 2000, 4 being 2500 and every subsequent rebuy is 2500 as well as the top-up.

brianon

Meant to post these awhile ago to see what people thought.
This is what we've been using for a good while now and it seems to work well.
Games aways seem to last around 4 hours.

1500 chips to start.

10/20
15/30
20/40
25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
200/400
300/600
400/800
600/1200
800/1600
1000/2000

20 Minutes per blind level.
No add-ons.
Unlimited re-buy for first 2 hours. 1/2 entrance fee gets you 1/2 750 chips.

Anyone think the re-buy is wrong ? As in you re-buy for half the entrance fee and get 1/2 the starting chips ?
Not sure why others give more chips for re-buys.

Brian.

Dub13

brianon
Why no top ups..?

brianon

Well some of the lads are tighter than a ducks arse under water.

They think that if we allow top-ups then your effectively just upping the entrence fee as everyone else will top-up so they'll have to do so also.

I'm not so against it myself as it would up the $$$$, not that I've won many of them :rolleyes:

corblimey

I'm with brianon on everything here, the rebuy level, no top ups, etc. I can understand the difference when playing in a club, but for a home game, this method makes most sense to me, imho.

Iago

The problem with not giving more chips for a rebuy is the value associated. For brians example if we have 7 players starting and I lose the last of my 1,500 chips with the blinds at 25/50 then the average stack size (presuming no prior rebuys) is 1,750.

If I rebuy then I'm getting less than 50% of the average stack size and 15*BB..it becomes almost an all-in or nothing on every hand, I'm at a complete disadvantage to the other players.

If I rebuy again at the 50/100 level then I've only got 7.5*BB and it comes down to luck rather than anything else.

rebuys should increase at each rebuy as musician pointed out earlier, it means that everyone has an equal chance when sitting down rather than rebuying and getting no value for it..

mewso

Yea I'm afraid it's a well established fact as Iago has said that the value of chips decreases as tournament goes on (see Theory of Poker - Sklansky). Of course Home games are different to casinos but in what way? Possibly in the way that casinos have established reliable methods to make a game fair and competitive.

corblimey

I'm trying to get my head around the whole "chips lose value" concept. Is this just because as the blinds go up and the head count drops, people are more willing to lay down 100 where they would have laid down 10 a couple hours previously?

I'm just wondeing how to explain that concept to several drunken players when one re-buys and gets 1500 and another, 40 minutes later, gets 2000.

brianon

corblimey wrote:

I'm just wondeing how to explain that concept to several drunken players when one re-buys and gets 1500 and another, 40 minutes later, gets 2000.

Yeah, Sklansky doesn't mention how after hand one Player B, who just lost all his chips, is now in second place with T2000 !!!!! or how Player C gets up and puches me in the face for saying Player B should get more than Player C's chip count !!!

Iago

brianon wrote:

Yeah, Sklansky doesn't mention how after hand one Player B, who just lost all his chips, is now in second place with T2000 !!!!! or how Player C gets up and puches me in the face for saying Player B should get more than Player C's chip count !!!

That's why the first rebuy matches the buyin amount, because that can tend to be earlier on, and then the rebuys increase accordingly as the night goes on.

The simple fact is that the average chip stack increases with each player that loses their chips and 1,000 chips with the blinds at 10/25 are worth more than 1,000 chips at 100/200...

just explain and agree the structure before you start, once everybody knows and buys into it you shouldn't have any problems.