I'm typing this up the day after our big Season 6 Project Mayhem Final Tournament (congrats again, Ozzie!), fresh from the buzz of our biggest prize pool yet (approaching a thousand dollars!). But even before we had the PMFT, I had a very warm buzz from our our poker games have been going as of late. Season 6 saw us move into a new home with a terrific basement for playing poker. We moved up from one table to two. Our total roster of participants grew from 73 to 85, and there are a few other folks giving hints that they'd like to make it onto the invite list.
Heading into Season 6 we had made some small adjustments to the game as we strive for continual improvement.
We tweaked the ubiquitous Quick Tournament so it was straight-up no limit hold'em, and restricted the number of rebuys so that folks only got one each. I think the shift to NL betting made things a bit easier on everyone, and with our attendance numbers growing compared to Season 5, it made sense to not let the Quick Tournament drag too late into the night. One other item which wasn't really emphasized but was important to me, was that we started the Quick Tournament much closer to our announced 5pm starting time than we had been when we lived in our last place. If we ask you to be punctual, the least we can do is to make sure you're not going to be standing around for too long waiting to get into a card game.
Season 6 was the first time we had converted things over into the voluntary pot-luck format and rewarded folks with bonus chips in the Quick Tournament for showing up on time with a dish to share. Thank you to everyone for all the items you brought over, whether it was a home-made treat or just a quick pass through the grocery store on the way over — we appreciate that you and your contributions make poker night our night together.
We also instituted, late in the season, after we purchased the second table, a similar chip incentive for bringing along a new player (to help bolster our roster). This worked out very well as folks introduced us to some fun new people. I was concerned that if we start giving in-game incentives for showing up with new faces that folks would start recruiting the homeless and bringing them into our home, but we met some pretty cool new people.
We locked the buy-in price of the Quick Tournament in at $10 so folks always knew what they were in for. I didn't hear feedback on this, but it seems to make sense that folks should always have a good feeling for what they're getting into on any given night.
We stretched the season out from 8 Saturday nights to 10, and added the Ante-Only Tournament style. More poker is good, and I think the AOT was well-received.
The changes for Season 6 felt a lot like tweaks to me, rather than anything too revolutionary. Season 7 should see more in that same vein.
First up, I'd like to change all our game structures to match a more traditional format starting at the 25 chip level. I'm going to basically multiply our current structure by the appropriate scaling factor, find the best match for the standard structure that you'd find in a casino to fit our levels, and then adjust the starting stacks so that the net effect is a pretty much a cosmetic change. I think this'll mostly help folks new to our home: starting with 100 chips and playing your third level with blinds of 7 and 14 can be sort of confusing (well uncomfortable), but if you start with (say) 1500 chips and the third level is 100/200, then it may be a little bit less confusing.
Secondly, I'd like to tweak our venerated Standard Tournament. Currently it has unlimited rebuys through the first ten levels. What I'd like to do is to leave that rebuy rule in place, but to also offer folks who did not use any rebuys the opportunity to perform one add-on at the close of the rebuy period. Everybody has got their own style of playing, and I don't want the patient types to get overly frustrated if they just don't see any cards that they can play. So now if your stack just sort of dwindles and you don't get any action, you don't have to feel like you're just falling behind the rest of the players. The add-on price would be the same amount as the rebuy price, the cost of the buy-in would add to your stack by the same size as the starting amount.
I'd also like to extend an idea I talked about above regarding consistent buy-ins, and put a stake in the ground that the buy-in for the Main Event is fixed at $20 each Saturday.
We will be debuting a new tournament type in our traditional Episode 2 slot for the season: the Flannel Tournament. No, that doesn't mean it'll be 90's grunge music all night long (although, that is an idea...) but it refers to the betting style. We're going to alternate rounds of Fixed Limit (FL) and No Limit (NL) betting (FLNL - viva le Eddie Vedder). There's some tweaks to the structure to make this work, but I'd like to accomplish a few things here. No Limit is called the Cadillac of card games, but it's good to remind everyone the roots of hold'em. Fixed Limit is a different game unto its own, and there is a lot of upside to that style as well. Hands go more quickly, the amount of risk on any given hand is lower, and honestly I find the game ends up a lot more chatty and social when played in that style. Also, a significant portion of our cash game night is played FL, and I think there could be some synergy for folks to see it in action at the tournament table as well.
I'm going to lengthen the levels of the Main Events by a few minutes. Currently poker night starts at 5pm and runs to about 10pm. After I'm done with things I'm guessing it'll stretch to 10:30 or 11pm for those lucky enough to still be playing. I will not be touching the 10-8-5 minute reduced structure of the Faster Tournament, however.
I had thought about making tweaks to Project Mayhem to try to further bolster the prize pool. Then we played last night. Through the season we had collected $276 towards the prize pool, while our S6Ep10 Main Event (the Cheap Rebuy Tournament) had a prize pool of $320. It seemed goofy to me that this big PMFT would be playing for less than a regular season tournament. But a funny thing happened, some folks decided to add to their starting chip stack and a couple of folks who weren't in PM decided to play in the tournament. Suddenly the starting prize pool got just north of $500. Now we're cookin'! And then when folks saw they could win a share of $504, the idea of rebuying started to look more attractive. Out of the 11 of us playing, we had 7 rebuys and the pool got up to $936!! The whole line about collecting an extra buck or two per tournament from folks sort of seemed inappropriate after that, so we'll stick with the same $3/per as Season 6. I will cap the duration of the levels for the next PMFT at 15 minutes though. We could've done with an hour shorter tournament, IMO.
I may end up making other small tweaks as I start to comb through our tournament structures (Rule 8 has undergone a natural progression of late, but I spelled it out on that page), but nothing outlandish. What we're currently doing really seems to be working so I really don't want to gum up the works unnecessarily. If you've got feedback or think there is something that I'm not considering, please drop me an email in the weeks ahead and let me know what you're thinking. This is our game, and I'd like to know how everyone is thinking things are working out.
Getting rid of the "odd-ball" levels (with smaller starting stack size) was a good idea.
The FLanNeL Tournament is a mind-bender. Lots of questions about how structure progressed, and available betting. Is this too advanced for our crowd?
Extension of Main Event tournament durations was a good idea.
[?] Eliminate one of the odd tournament types and replace with Dice Poker. Each hand, roll 2d6. 7 or 11 = Texas Hold 'Em. 2, 3, 12 = Omaha Hi/Lo. 4, 10 = Omaha Hi. 5 = Pineapple. 10 = Crazy Pineapple. 6, 8 = Hold 'Em, but winner must show 1 card to receive pot. Just a thought.