What Key Element Makes a Poker Tournament Player-Friendly?

Whether you're playing a tournament that costs the price of a movie ticket and popcorn, or a major event that decimates a month's salary at your day job – and whether you're playing in a casino against 100 opponents or online against 1,000 – the most important feature of any no-limit hold'em event is the same. The tournament's structure is its key element. How much in chips do you get to start with in relation to the size of the blinds? How long is each round of play? How much do the blinds increase at the start of each new round? The answers to these three questions determine whether a tournament is "player-friendly" – and should be the main reason why you decide to play a no-limit tournament or catch a good movie instead. Let's take a look at each of these three elements and note how they interact with each other.

The amount in chips that each player receives at the beginning of the tournament in relation to the size of the blinds is very important. I've heard small buy-in tournament players say, "Wow, they give us $1,000 in starting chips!" and think they're in poker heaven. But if the starting blinds are $50-$100, they're closer to poker hell than heaven, because they have only 10 times the size of the big blind to start with. You want to receive an amount of chips worth 40 or more times the big blind. For example, if the blinds start at $15-$25, you want to receive $1,000 in tournament chips to start, enough to meet the 40-1 you should receive.

The length of the rounds is the second important factor in a player-friendly tournament. The shorter the rounds, the more significant the luck factor becomes. The longer the rounds, the more your level of skill comes into play. Most $500 and higher buy-in tournaments have 40- to 60-minute rounds. If the rounds are 30 minutes or less, I suggest that you do not enter the event. You need the longer rounds so that you won't feel pressured to play inferior hands such as A-7 offsuit from out of position. You want to have enough time to work with your chips so that if you lose a hand, you'll still have enough ammunition to fire another round. With 45-minute rounds and 40 times the size of the big blind in starting chips, for example, you have the right amount of chips and enough time to play good tournament strategy without taking unnecessary risks to try to build your chip stack.

The size of the incremental increases in the blinds at the start of each new round is the third element of a good tournament. The slower the blinds increase, the more player-friendly the tournament is. In the old days of tournament poker, the blinds doubled at the start of each new round. Tex Morgan's computer program (Tex's Tears, as it is commonly called) helped tournament directors understand that they could run tournaments without doubling the blinds every round and still get the tournament to end within a reasonable amount of time.

In many of today's tournaments, the size of the blinds doubles for the first three rounds, after which the blinds move up at the rate of about 50 percent per round. This structure is a little fast in the beginning, but it makes up for the fast start by slowing the increases in the blinds after the third limit. And in the late rounds, the increases slow down even further, which gives players more bang for their buck the deeper they go into the event. A lot of big buy-in tournament players prefer this type of structure because, if they cannot build competitive chip stacks early in the tournament, they can get back into their usual high-stakes cash games, where they make their daily bread and butter.

In our book, How to Win No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments, Tom McEvoy and I list several other factors that contribute to making a tournament a good investment rather than a bad beat for your bankroll, including a reasonable distribution of the prize money. I estimate that players make some sort of money save among themselves in 80 percent of tournaments. Since some type of money deal is made at the final table in the vast majority of them, having the top prize no more than 36 percent is favorable. A reasonable distribution for second place might be around 19 percent, with about 9.5 percent going to the third-place winner and 6 percent awarded to the fourth-place finisher.

Here's one last hint: Before you plunk down your buy-in, ask for a tournament structure sheet that lists the dollar amount of starting chips, the size of the starting blinds, the length of the rounds, and the incremental increases in the blinds. If it follows the guidelines I've listed, go for the gold! If it doesn't, head for the door.

Tom McEvoy is a representative of PokerStars.com and the voice of ProPlay, an innovative way to learn winning poker strategy. You can find out more at ProPlayLive.com/TomMcEvoy.