hi all.
been playing on this site a few years now and have recently started to play at my local. not for mega money, (£5-£10) only thing is, they seem to want to change the rules each week. was wanting to know what advice all you lot have, ie; how often blinds go up, whats the best way to use the chips (all chips are equal or red=100, blue=500 etc etc) we usually have anything from 5 players to 15 players. personally i like to play all chips are equal and the blinds go up everytime 1 person goes out (depending on how many playing) if quite a few players in, we usually cap the blinds at 5/10. any advise/tips is welcomed.

cheers

I noticed on the TV tonight that the pros don't usually change the value of the blinds, unless they want to 'spice it up' ... but if you see Mod_Daniella at the tables ... she is a vegas dealer: so look no further for an expert.

I don't play for money - I used to be the accountant for a guy that could shuffle a pack of cards and deal you out 4 aces - he told me never to play for money. Sage adivce me thinks.

I remember someone years ago on the radio saying that gambling is fine as long as you view it as 'purchasing entertainment', that is, you expect to lose it; so, if you do win, its a bingo-bonus.

One idea is not to play for money, but instead, make it that when someone goes out - they have to do a dare. LOL. That could be awesome entertainment?

Bindi we play at our pub each week for similar stakes and with about 20 people on average.
Here is the "standard procedure" as used by nuts poker league and similar organisations.

1. Each Player has 10,000 chips in the following denominations....50, 100, 500,1000,and 5000 obviously of different colours.
4 x50 chip..8 x 100....2 x 500 3 x 1000 and 1 x 5000
2.The blind structure is as follows. 50 and 100. --100 and 200----200 and 400----400 and 800----500 and 1000-----1k and 2k---2k and 4k---- and finally 4k and 8k. (the final blinds 4-8 are only used if too many people left in towards chucking out time.)
3. The blinds are raised every 20 minutes. (we have a laptop with counter on but a simple stopwatch will do.)
4. we use 2 0r 3 tables depending on numbers and play down till 10 left for final table.

A normal night would take about 3 -3.5 hours with 20 players using the above structure.
We don't allow rebuys and the money is dished out on similar lines to our own tourney tables here. ie. winner gets half of all stakes then remaining money is allocated to 2nd and third on a 2/3 - 1/3 basis.
Hope this helps.
We have been using the above for 2 years now after much trial and error and it is a tried and tested formula.

gegs12@live.co.uk is my msn if you have any questions or need advice.

Gegs' proposal looks quite good, however, what he is proposing can be qualified as "short stack turbo structures". Winning with those structures demands quite a bit of luck as people will get choked by blinds rather quickly.

But before I explain what we've used, then here's a note: are you playing it as cash game or as a tourney? In tourney the blinds raise in time, in cash games they don't (at least not in any specific pre-planned order, obviously players can raise them if they feel like it).

Now, here's what we've been using: starting stack 310. (The have chips with values of 1, 5, 10, 25 and 100; 310 would be 10 x 1, etc.)

Blind levels are normally either 45 minutes or one hour each. Levels being 1/2, 2/5, 5/10, 7-8/15, 10/20, 15/30 and so on. Normally can also take 3-4 hours, but on average we have 6-9 players. :) And I kind of like it, in the early hours it very much has the "deep stack" feel to it, but on later levels blinds start "squeezing" people as well.

It doesn't matter if you all buy in at same amount. I.E. Dead pot with even buy in.

Gegs is the master of accounts, but a right chip amount is only attributable to amount of buy in. So it all reneges itself. I think that gegs crowd have it right, down to last three from buy in tables.

By the way, I won my first ever cash game, thanks to u lot and lessons learned, don't underestimate the power of free chip playing.

thank you, a few good tips i could use there, especially gegs. my problem is that we have different numbers of players each week, should we keep the same rules, ie; same blind time, same amount of chips etc. we dont play cash games, just tournaments. we pay top 3 same as this site, (depending on how many players are in) i think i maybe either playing at the wrong pub or with the wrong people. myself, id like to sit down and have 1 decent long game of poker. the people i play with at my local want to play 5 games in 3 hours (no joke). they even split the prize money when they get down to the last 2 people to get another game started. (maybe this is only because we play for £5-£10) still, 1 game on a sunday should be enough whatever the buy in amount eh???

know what you mean bindi....we tend to have same people every week who play it properly...thats why it takes 3 hours

we never vary blind structure mate. sounds to me like you should have one game for 15 quid. then youd get serious play and no rash bets cos there wont be another opportunity.

Bindi, generally it's a good idea to keep the same level lenghts and the same stack sizes irrelevant of how many players you have. With more players you can simply add more levels to the end of it, but the early levels don't need tobe changed.

Another very general suggestion would be to have 100xBB or perhaps a bit more than that as the starting stack. And don't make the levels very "steep" (having blinds double every level is very steep) because then it'll be a bingo game in the end where everybody have less than 10xBB.