Hold Em Authority - Texas Hold Em Strategy and advice for all levels of players

I’ve played in a lot of home poker tournaments in my day, but only a few of them were run with any sort of organization and sensibility. What does it take to run a flawless tournament? Well, I’ve got a few ideas, and I’m here to help, so let’s get right to it.

Obviously there are some non-money spending issues that one has to decide upon. The most common one is “Do we want to play multiple tournaments in a night, or do we want to spend a whole day playing one big poker tournament?” This question can be answered simply by asking your participants and then adjusting your blind level increases appropriately. One big tournament in a day? Structure the tournament like a WSOP event - give the players 10,000 chips and have the blinds rise once every half hour or hour. Want to play more than one tournament in an evening? Jack up the blinds every 10 minutes.

Now to the money-spending additions to your poker tournament:

First off - it’s hard to play poker without chips, and I absoultely hate playing poker with bicycle poker chips. Spend a little extra money and get yourself a nice set of chips, chips that a player could shuffle or do other tricks with if he/she was so inclined. It makes your whole operation a little more classy, and why wouldn’t you want to be classy?

Next, it’s good to have a few nice sets of cards. Might I suggest Kem Cards? The description pulled from the amazon link I just included states, “100 % Plastic Kem Cards are widely regarded as the world’s finest playing card. Kem cards are made entirely of cellulose acetate material, the most durable plastic used today in playing card production. These cards are scuff and break resistant and completely washable.” All those one dollar packs of cards you buy at Wal-Mart wear quickly, with corners that bend, tare, or simply get dirty, thus giving players that are paying attention an easy cheat when that card is dealt to someone. The extra money is worth it, trust me. You’ll never have to make that Wal-Mart run again to get a cheap fix.

What to do for a table? Well, there’s many varieties you can buy, and ther price ranges span from around $25 for a tabletop to $1200 for a real casino style poker table. Another option available is making a poker table. A little resourcefulness and handyman skills can make a table for fairly cheap. This is the route I went, and I was able to find some resources for quite cheap.  The resources I used were foam and carpet padding for the rail along with some vinyl from your local thrift store, old pool table felt from a pool shop for the table itself, a piece of plywood, and a staple gun with plenty of staples.
I’ve found that having everyone bring their own chair to sit on works best - this way you don’t have an unnecessary amount of chairs sitting around at all times you are not running a poker tournament. Obviously it doesn’t hurt to have a few extras lying around in case someone unexpected shows up, but generally most players, if notified, will bring their own chairs.

I feel that this is the kicker to hosting a smooth poker tournament, and I’ve saved it for last so it sticks in your mind. Hopefully you have a laptop computer at this point in your life - if you don’t, set up your tournament fairly close to your computer, because this poker tournament software will help answer so many questions that people might have. It will tell the player what amount chip colors represent, how much time is left in the blind level, what the payouts are, etc. It makes the tournament run much more smoothly, and you can play host with the things that matter most, like making sure there’s enough booze and food on hand.

These ideas are all the things I have, or have done in the past with hosting a poker tournament.  I’ve received no complaints and many compliments with this strategy, so I’m telling you, it works for me.  If you want different ideas on how to run a home poker tournament, check out Home Poker Tourney.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 8:57 pm and is filed under New to the Game of Holdem?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.