Project Mayhem - Season 07

The gist of Project Mayhem is that participating folks pay an extra $3 per tournament into the prize pool. How many Saturday night tournaments you enter (and to a much lesser-degree, how well you do during those tournaments) will dictate your starting chip stack at the final table. At the end of the season, all the PM participants set up a time and date for the Final Tournament, and we all play for the big money.

Eligibility

There is room at the Final Tournament for up to eighteen players, so we can only accept that many Project Mayhem members. The first eighteen folks to physically buy into a Season VI tournament will be entered into Project Mayhem. We will only run Project Mayhem events concurrent with our weekend (Saturday) games.

PM-eligible tournaments happen on Saturday nights. There are two each Saturday night (the Quick Tournament and the evening's Main Event). Folks who are in Project Mayhem have the option to play as PM-eligible for each of these two tournaments. To be PM-eligible, you have to pay $3 at the time you're playing (and that money will go off into a separate envelope). What does this eligibility get for you? Two things: 1) you get one Attendance Point (which ultimately gets used to determine your starting chips in the final tournament, see below for more details), and 2) you earn Project Mayhem Points (PiMPs! — hmmm, maybe I should rename Attendance Points "Happening Occupations"...) based on how well you perform in the tournament. PiMPs also get you some starting chips, and they also have one other specific use for the final table which will be explained below.

Even if you're part of PM, you can decide to not buy-in to a tournament as PM-eligible (and save $3 in the process). If that's the case, then it's just like you didn't show up for that particular tournament: you don't get an Attendance Point, nor would you earn any PiMPs.

Players for Season VII

1. Neal

2. Shannon

3. Dave

4. Jeff H

5. Risë

6. Tom

7. Julius

8. Grant

9. Billy

10. Jaci

11. Bob S

12. Dave O

13. Dylan

14 -18. open

Points

As indicated above, you need to buy into a PM-eligible tournament (for $3) to earn Attendance Points and PiMPs. Even if you've already committed to being a Project Mayhem member if you don't pay at the time of entering the tournament you're not earning either of these things. Money up front, 100% of the time.

Attendance Points and Starting Stacks

Attendance Points are earned for each eligible tournament you enter (pay your $3). Each tournament is worth T1600 chips to your starting stack at the final table. Additionally, if you hit certain attendance thresholds, you get T1600 additional bonus chips (occurring at the 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15-tournament thresholds). A table of tournaments entered vs. starting chips at the final table, then, looks as follows:

2 Tournaments = T3200 chips

4 Tournaments = T6400 chips

6 Tournaments = T9600 chips,

8 Tournaments = T14400 chips,

10 Tournaments = T19200 chips,

12 Tournaments = T24000 chips,

14 Tournaments = T28800 chips,

16 Tournaments = T33600 chips,

18 Tournaments = T36800 chips, and

20 Tournaments = T40000 chips.

Finally, before the Final Tournament starts, folks will have the option to buy additional starting chips at the cost of T1600 chips per $3 spent. The maximum starting stack, however, is capped at T40000 chips (so if you already paid $60 over the course of 20 tournaments to start with T40000 chips, you can't spend any more to chip-up at the final table). Obviously this money all goes straight into the prize pool.

PiMPs

Things which earn you PiMPS:

1 PiMP.... Enter a tournament (pay your $3)

1 PiMP.... Per player that finishes worse than you in a tournament (they do not have to be Project Mayhem-eligible players, 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 (not affected if they rebuy: does not have to be a permanent KO; 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, chops or other prize agreements do not affect this point, nor does winning Bounty money during that particular tournament)

1 PiMP.... For finishing in first place

PiMPs are good for two things. First, for every 15 full PiMPs earned (no rounding: 29 PiMPs is just as good as 15), you get another T1600 to your starting stack (capped at T40000), so even if you don't make all 20 tournaments, if you can make it to 14 or 16, chances are pretty good that you can get all T40000 in your starting stack. Second, seating at the final table tournament will be based on the order of PiMPs. Whomever finishes with the highest number of PiMPs will have their first option of seats at the table, with the option to defer if they so choose. Each time someone selects a seat at the table, we will scroll back up to the top of the PiMP list and allow the top remaining person their option of seats. Once you've picked a seat, there's no changing your mind.

Tiebreaks amoung 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) 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.

Final Tournament

The Final Tournament would be run similarly to the Standard Tournament format but with deeper stacks. It'd be the only event for the evening. Rebuy rules are tweaked a bit: folks busting out have the option to rebuy back in at a rate of $4 gets you T2000 chips. The rebuy period is extended through the end of the 16th level (instead of the 10th in a Standard Tournament). One rebuy per player only.

We intend to run weekend tournaments every 3 or 4 weeks (2 week or 3 week gap between games), so the expectation is that the Final Tournament would occur roughly 33-44 weeks after S7E01 (probably April or May; we'll definitely want it to happen before the end of the school year). We'd negotiate a weekend that works for PM participants well in advance of this time frame, though as hosts we'd have to reserve the right to yank the rug out from under everyone based on events in our lives. We have canceled as late as the day of the event in the past (though admittedly, those were pretty extreme circumstances — affected parties likely remember the reasonings...). From my heart I'd say that we'd do everything we could to hit the date we all agreed upon. But to eliminate any potential for misunderstandings: if you miss the date we play the final table (regardless of your fault or ours), you're not getting anything refunded (folks already are falling asleep at night dreaming about winning all that Big Money).

It's never too early to begin negotiating for a Final Table date. If Neal and Shannon aren't doing a good job with kicking off that conversation, please initiate it yourself. I have posted a proposed list of approximate dates for Season 7 events, below.

Note well: The date has been set for Season 7, and it's Sunday May 18 at 2pm. Keep an eye on your emails!

If you didn't enter Project Mayhem during the season, but find that May 18 is open on your calendar and decide that you'd like to play, you can buy in directly at the same rate that folks add to their stack: $3 gets you T1600 chips. For a total of $75 you could receive a full starting stack of T40,000 chips (or you could show up, hand me $3, and start the game with T1600 chips and try to get really lucky — it's up to you). Two notes with this plan, we have 18 seats available so PM members will get priority over non-PM members for seats, and we've got a seating system (spelled out above, under PiMPs) which leaves you at the bottom of the barrel.

Goals

I see three goals:

• 1. Have a deep-stacked tournament for folks who are interested in playing for more than two hours.

  2. Have a tournament with a much bigger prize pool.

  3. Encourage folks to attend our regular weekend games more regularly.

The first two goals seem to go hand-in-hand. A big end-of-season blow-out tournament just sounds like pure fun. We'd ensure a group of folks that knew all our procedures and tendencies, which should make things go a bit faster. It'd kinda sorta act like a tournament of champions in that it'd be our biggest pay out each time around.