How to host a home poker tournament

Set the player count and the finish time

Everything starts from two numbers: how many players, and when the night has to end. The first tells you how many tables you need; the second, which blind structure to build.

• One table seats 9 or 10 players. Beyond that, you need two tables, rebalanced as players bust, then merged into a final table.
• Set the finish time before anything else. A game that has to end around midnight is not played on a six-hour tournament structure.
• Late registration: decide up to which level a latecomer can still buy in.

Build the blind structure

The structure links the first big blind to the last one within the time you have. A simple method:

1. The first big blind is one hundredth of the starting stack: everyone starts with a hundred big blinds.
2. The final big blind is about one twenty-fourth of all the chips in play: the last two players then have a dozen big blinds each, enough to finish.
3. The levels fill the time, with a ten-minute break roughly every hour and a quarter.

For 8 players with 5,000 chips and a two-hour game, that gives 12-minute levels:

Level	Blinds	Starts
1	25 / 50	0:00
2	50 / 100	0:12
3	75 / 150	0:24
4	100 / 200	0:36
5	125 / 250	0:48
6	200 / 400	1:00
Break	color up the 25s	1:12
7	300 / 600	1:22
8	400 / 800	1:34
9	600 / 1,200	1:46
10	1,000 / 2,000	1:58

The likely end comes around 2:10. Plan two more levels, 1,500 / 3,000 then 2,000 / 4,000. The blind structure calculator redoes this for your player count and length.

Choose the starting stack and its chips

The starting stack is counted in big blinds: 5,000 chips for a first big blind of 50. Then build it from the chips in your set: plenty of small values to pay the early blinds, a few big ones so the stack is quick to count.

With a 300-chip set — 100 of 25, 100 of 100, 50 of 500 and 50 of 1,000 —, each of the 8 players gets 12 chips of 25, 12 of 100, 3 of 500 and 2 of 1,000: 5,000 in all. The same set seats up to 16 players at 5,000 chips. The guide How many chips per player sets out the method.

Decide on rebuys and add-ons

• No rebuys (freeze-out): a busted player is out for good. The game is shorter and more predictable.
• With rebuys: a busted player, or sometimes a short-stacked one, buys another starting stack during a set period, often until the first break. Keep those stacks in your chip set: each rebuy uses one.
• The add-on: at the end of the rebuy period, each player can buy one extra stack, of a size you choose.

Write the rule down before the game: until when, how many times, and at what price.

Split the prize pool

If the game is played for money, the payouts are announced before the first deal, never at the bubble. The rules on games played for money differ from one country, or state, to another: check the ones that apply where you play.

Paying about a third of the players rewards the most people; paying fewer mainly rewards the win. At 8 players and $20 each, $160 in all, the club scheme pays 3 places:

Place	Payout
1st	$88
2nd	$43
3rd	$29

Amounts are rounded to the dollar, and whatever the rounding leaves goes to the winner. The payout calculator works it out for your field, rebuys included.

On the night

1. Put the clock where everyone can see it: a laptop, a tablet or a TV. The online tournament clock is enough for one table.
2. Draw seats at random, and the first dealer with them.
3. Announce the rules: structure, rebuys, payouts, what happens to latecomers.
4. Start on time, and track the money as you go: who has paid their buy-in, rebuys and add-on.
5. At the break, color up the small chips as soon as no blind needs them any more, by exchanging them for higher values.
6. At the end, pay the places as announced.

House rules to announce

A game without written rules is played from memory. Decide in advance, and say it at the start of the night:

• up to which level a latecomer can register, and what happens to an absent player’s blinds;
• rebuys and the add-on: how many, until when, at what price;
• the payouts;
• who runs the game: that person settles disputes, and their decision stands.

Run the night with MyPokerCaptain

MyPokerCaptain runs the tournament in the browser, with nothing to install, and keeps working without internet. The free plan covers a one-table tournament of 9 players, with the clock, the structure and payouts entered by hand. The Home Games plan, at €7.99 a month, adds multi-table tournaments, seating and balancing, rebuys, automatic payouts and sound alerts; it comes with a 14-day trial, no credit card required. The pricing page details each plan.