Project Mayhem

Goals

We have a few motives in setting up Project Mayhem.  First up, we think having a championship tournament with a big prize pool is a lot of fun.  Secondly, we are motivated to have a more consistent set of participants showing up for our weekend games (recruiting is probably right up there with cleaning up the next day as being the least-fun aspect of hosting poker night) and PM is set up to reward folks for showing up more regularly. 

Participation

The final tournament can handle up to 37 participants, so if we have more folks who want to buy into that event then we have seats, we'll open up seating to the most active folks first.  I don't anticipate this will actually be a true constraint (but I'm here for it if we garner that much interest!).  Only folks who've participated in one of our regular season events are eligible for the final tournament.  I am very sorry if you are someone who wants to participate but aren't eligible.  This is a hard rule.

The results from each Saturday you participate in will earn you chips towards your starting stack at PMFT (though we're all up against the same 50,000 chip maximum.)  And each Saturday's worth of chips would cost you $20 if you wanted to participate.  This is a meaningful discount over the direct rate you'd use to top-off your stack due to lack of regular season attendances.

For folks who participate on many Saturday nights, we will use your best performances to calculate your cheapest path for the PMFT buy-in.

Points

The gist of the point system is that you earn via attendance, outlasting other players in a tournament, knocking out other players, and finishing in the money.  The rest of this section details that process.

Each Saturday is intended to be worth about as much as any other Saturday.  Since we sometimes play two tournaments and more often only play one tournament, we use the same system for each, but everything is doubled for the tournament on the one-tournament nights.  (For instance, when I say "Each tournament is worth T2000 chips to your starting stack," that means that each single-tournament night Standard Tournament is worth T4000 chips to your starting stack.)

Points are broken up into two categories based on attendance (APs) and performance (PiMPs).  The more points you earn, the more opportunity you'll have to purchase chips for your PMFT starting stack at the cheaper rate.  

Attendance Points and Starting Stacks

Attendance Points are earned for each eligible tournament you enter.  Each tournament is worth T2000 chips to your starting stack at the final table.  

PiMPs

Things which earn you PiMPS:

1 PiMP.... Enter a tournament

1 PiMP.... Per player that finishes worse than you in a tournament (players who chop prizes all finish one spot ahead of the last person not included in the chop)

1 PiMP.... Per knockout you put on a fellow tournament player (whether or not they rebuy is irrelevant; note that for the Add-on Extravaganza, making someone use a rebuy token does not qualify as a knockout)

1 PiMP.... For finishing in the money (based on prize allotment on Structure page, alternative pay-outs such as Bounty money do not affect this PiMP)

2 PiMPs.... For finishing in first place

Note that we will issue partial PiMPs in the case of folks chopping a tournament before it would be considered in-the-money (say 4 people chop a tournament which has 3 pay-outs: each PM participant who is part of the chop would earn 3/4ths of a PiMP towards the in-the-money point), and similarly for the two PiMPs  given to the winning player: if there's a chop we break those points up (the calculation here is based on actual dollars won ahead of posted 2nd place prize compared to the gap between first-and-second place posted prizes).

PiMPs matter for three different reasons:

1. They make your starting stack larger in the cheapest possible manner, 

2. Invites to join the PMFT (and its limited seating), and 

3. The PMFT seat draft.

Starting Chips

For every 15 full PiMPs (without rounding) you earn an additional 2000 chips to your starting stack.  29 PiMPs is as good at 15 PiMPs (in either case you've added 2000 chips).

Invitation

We are willing to seat up to 37 people for a poker night (we assume — 34 is the most we've ever had participating in a tournament, and we're not really sure the maximum number of folks who'd fit comfortably around the Upstairs Table so this upper cap may change based on experiences).   Because we'll have more than this number of people eligible to come to the PMFT, we will use the ranking of PiMPs to determine the order that invitations go out.  The first batch will go out to the top of the PiMPs list, up to this number, and they'll have two or three days to RSVP to the big tournament.  For folks we don't hear back from (or folks who reply they aren't coming), we'll open up invites to the next group of people on the list.  Once we have a confirmed number that hits our maximum seating capacity, then we'll stop sending out invites.  We have never hit the capped number but since it's a possibility we're being careful.

Seat Draft

For the PMFT, everyone picks their starting seat.  The person at the top of the PiMPs list goes first and they may either pick a seat, or they may defer, in which case the next person on the list chooses (or defers to the third person, etc.).  Once a seat is selected, then we start over back at the top of the list for anyone unseated.  If we ever get deferrals all the way down to the last remaining attendee on the list, they have to make a selection.  This is a fun "perk" for folks who perform well during the season, and can help you ensure you don't start at a table with (or sit next to) a particular competitor who has your number (or doesn't use enough deodorant).  Or maybe you want a view of the TV, or don't want to sit by the windows, etc.  

Tiebreaks among PiMPs first go to the person with the fewest total tournament entries (if someone gets 47 PiMPs in six tournaments, then they beat out someone who got 47 PiMPs in eight tournaments).  The next tiebreak would be to add 1 extra PiMP per category starting at the bottom of the above list (so starting with the number of first place finishes, even if it only a decimal amount was earned on a given tournament) to see if that makes a difference.  If there's still a tie after that, then we'll high-card to break the tie.

I won't be calculating PiMPs for everyone on the fly (between tournaments), but will update a spreadsheet and post it here between Saturdays.

One way to think about the Project Mayhem Final Tournament starting chips is in terms of "bundles."  Each bundle is 2000 starting chips.  Every time you buy into a tournament it's worth one bundle of chips., and for every 15 PiMPs you've earned you get a bundle.  For a maximum stack at the final tournament, you should be trying to earn 25 bundles.

Costs

To turn Attendance Points and PiMPs into chips, you've got to pay!  The rate is $20 per each Saturday night.  (If you somehow only attend one tournament on one of the two-tournament nights, then your rate for that one tournament performance is $10.)  If you attend enough tournaments you may earn enough chips to cap your starting stack then I will use your most beneficial tournaments to minimize the cost of your buy-in.

If you don't earn enough points to cap your stack, then the alternative is to use the direct rate to cap your stack.  The direct rate is $5 per additional T1000 chips.  This is a steep price compared to earning chips through attendance, so if you're interested in the PMFT, try to make it to as many regular season events as you can!

The starting stack cap is 50,000 chips.

Topping off your stack is completely voluntary.  If you've earned 38,000 chips at the "$20 rate" and you're happy to start with that number of chips, then you're not obligated to spend the additional $60 to hit the cap.   

Similarly, if you earn 8,000 chips on the first Saturday you attend (having the time of your life, I'm sure!) and keep coming for the rest of the season, you'd be able to pay just that $20 entry cost and use that one result.  (I may think you're crazy, but I probably already think that about you anyway — you keep coming to our basement events, and I know we're all crazy!)  I don't expect this will ever come up, but the option exists.

Standings

PiMPs:

A couple of notes for our PiMP table: 

• For folks who've maxed out their starting stack, the "Cost for Earned Stack" (conveniently in green text) is their actual cost despite having earned points beyond what's required to max out the starting stack..

• I put in a line after the first 37 entries.  Above this line and you'll get a first-round invite to attend the PMFT (you'll have a few days to let us know you plan to attend, if I don't hear back from someone in this first round, I'll send out notes to the next few names below the line to try to fill up all the seats).

Until we have Season 17 results, I'll leave the final Season 16 tables below as placeholders.

Starting Chips:

Earned starting chips is based on attendance and performance during our regular season.  

"Chips to Top Off" is the number of chips needed to get to the capped stack.

"Cost to Top Off" is the price for that shortfall in chips (on top of the earned chip cost from entry fees).  This is an option: you don't have to buy those chips, nor would you need to buy all of those chips—any value in $5 increments can be used to bolster your stack (up to the cap).

Results

I used to create write-ups for evenings, but I ran out of motivation during Season 16 (I also encouraged other participants to send in their own write-ups to try to share the load, but nobody ever sent anything).  You can find those write ups in the navigation menu under the Structure link. 

So now instead, there are just tables of Project Mayhem results for each evening, below.  (I'll leave the full list of Season 16 regular season results below as placeholders until we generate some Season 17 results.)

Column values for each player in the Event Results will sum up to the PiMPs table, above.  The "Counts Double" indicator is for evenings with a single tournament, in which case you earn twice as many PiMPs as you would in a single tournament on a two-tournament night.

History

Links

Previous seasons of Project Mayhem can be found:

• Project Mayhem - Season 5

• Project Mayhem - Season 6

• Project Mayhem - Season 7

• Project Mayhem - Season 8

• Project Mayhem - Season 9

• Project Mayhem - Season 10

• Project Mayhem - Season 11

• Project Mayhem - Season 12

• Project Mayhem - Season 13

• Project Mayhem - Season 14

• Project Mayhem - Season 15 

• Project Mayhem - Season 16