Hosting a Texas Hold'em Tournament v2

This is an update to the Texas Hold'em Tournament document. The original can be found here. We've now hosted several of these and learned quite a bit in the process.

Looking for an event that will bring in a lot of money and people into the lodge while requiring zero investment and minimal time? Maybe a Texas Hold'em tournament is what you need! Now that we've hosted several at Elks Lodge 824, we're experts :) What follows is what we did, and how we did it. It was a very successful event and one that we'll be repeating at least once per quarter.

All you need to host a tournament : a few people who know the rules, some poker chips (ok, a lot of poker chips), and of course some place to play.

Below I describe our tournament, which was Texas Hold'em, elimination (last man standing wins).

Exluding any prize or rental costs, this event can be put on for less than $100 and a couple of hours of work, and a full, 100 player tournament will generate between $7500 and $10000!
  1. Before you begin
      1. Legalities
      2. Buy-in donation
      3. How many people can you host?
      4. How many winners, what will each receive?
    2. Getting things underway
      1. Location
      2. Tickets
      3. Poker Chips & Playing Cards
      4. Snacks
      5. Information Sheets & Posters
      6. Rebuys
      7. Prizes
      8. Miscellaneous
    3. Event Night
    4. Postmortem
    5. Cheating
      1. Chips
      2. Soft playing
      3. Chip dumping
    6. Post-script

Before you begin

Once you decide you want to hold the tournament, there are a few decisions that must be made:

Legalities

Courtesy of AB839, as of January 2007 a nonprofit is allowed to hold one controlled game per year in California. Your mileage may vary. See http://ag.ca.gov/gambling/pdfs/ab839.pdf for details. Also, it's wise to contact the local police department and/or district attorney's office to see if there are any local regulations you must meet.

Buy-in donation

The tournament is a fund raiser hosted by a non-profit entity, so the buy-ins (amount of money to enter the tournament) is a donation to the non-profit. We chose $50.00 solely because that is what was used at the tournament after which we modeled ours. This amount can obviously change depending on the lodge location, but it's a place to start. This amount will also limit the frequency of the tournaments -- for example, people may give $50 four times per year, but are not likely to do so if the event is hosted weekly, or even monthly.

Along with the buy-in donation, the number of chips given must be decided. Here we chose 750 points for the $50 (more on this in the nuts & bolts section below). Finally, decide if you want people to pre-register or just show up event night. Here I strongly suggest pre-registration as it guarantees the money. To encourage this, we chose $50.00 to pre-register, and $75.00 at the door.

How many people can you host?

This is a function of the amount of space, the number of volunteers, and how long you want the tournament to last. The more people obviously the longer the tournament, but you'll also want to make sure there are enough bartenders and cocktail waitresses, floor men to help settle disputes and give out chips, etc. You should also know up front what the minimum number of people is to make the event worthwhile, and have a goal. Here's what we did:
Number of Players
 Comments
25
 This is the minimum number of players that would make the event worthwhile and fun. At 8 players per table, this is only three tables.
50
 This was our goal.
100
 The maximum we could host.

How many winners, what will each receive?

Depending on the prizes this can either be the same no matter how many players, or can vary depending on the number of players. We chose to give gift certificates, redeemable for cash and based on the number of participants as follows:

Players
 Prizes
50 or fewer
First
 $350
Second
 $100
Third:
 $50
more than 50
First
 $500
Second
 $350
Third
 $100
Fourth
 Free entry to the next tournament

Getting things underway

Congratulations! You've gone through everything above & have decided to move forward. You'll not regret this! Give yourself and your committee at least one month to make the necessary preparations.

First, decide how you're going to attract people. We considered advertising but opted to try to keep this first event small, so we simply put a notice in the monthly newsletter and spread word around the lodge. Before we had made it through the, ``Before you begin,'' section word had already leaked out and the response was phenomenal. Again, try to keep the first event manageable and grow depending on the success.

There is surprisingly little to do once the ball gets rolling. You need:

Location

I'd guess each lodge has space to accommodate at least one hundred people. If not, one must be secured. Plan on sitting 8 - 10 people per table. If the bar will be open, make sure there are plenty of bartenders and waitresses.

Tickets

Simple, pre-printed and numbered tickets suffice here. Ours were sold at the lodge office, or folks could call in with a credit card.

Poker Chips


If at all possible, use good quality chips. These can be rented, or maybe you know people who have them. The cheap plastic chips tend to stick together, and depending on the age and agility of the players they can be a nuisance! We now use 11oz casino quality clay chips and the events are a lot more fun! This can be purchased relatively inexpensivly from places like CostCo and will last forever.

First you'll need to chose a point value per chip, ours was:

Colour
 Value
Red
 5 pts
Green
 25 pts
Black
 100 pts
Purple
 500 pts
Grey
 1000 pts
To expedite things when people show up to the event, the chips should be presorted. We used either plastic chip holders or red plastic drink cups containing:

15 Red (75 pts)
11 Green (275 pts)
4 Black (400 pts total)

For a total of 750 pts.

Make sure you've plenty of extra chips! For 100 people, you'll need 1,500 red, 1,100 green, 400 black for the initial buy in. People can buy more later, and as the betting progresses the lower value chips are traded in for higher value chips, so plan on having at least 1,800 red, 1,300 green, 1,000 black, 500 purple, and 500 grey.

Also remember you'll need one deck of brand-new playing cards per table!

Snacks

Initially we provided an array of snacks/hamburgers/hot dots/etc. This didn't work so good. It was messy, things spilled on the tables and chips, and it was expensive. Now we just provide bar snacks and pretzels.

Information Sheets & Posters

On each table we included a card that lists: hand ranks (what beats what), poker chip denominations, and the betting rules. These are a huge time saver for the floor man, as most questions are easily answered by looking at the cards. This card fits on 1/2 of an 8 1/2 x 11'' paper. We also supplied a dealer button. This is passed to the left after each hand so the dealer is always known. If you don't happen to have these, just about anything will do.

You should also have a few signs made to show how many of each chip should be in the initial buy-in so people can double check.

One or two large poster boards should also be made up listing betting progression, times, and any rebuy rules:

We started the event at 7:00 with a quick summary of how the event is played and basic rules. For betting progression & times, we used:

Time
 Small blind
 Big blind
7:10 - 7:55
 5
 10
7:55 - 8:00
 break
8:00 - 8:45
 10
 20
8:45 - 9:00
 break
9:00 - 9:20
 25
 50
9:20 - 9:40
 50
 100
9:40 - 10:00
 100
 200
10:00 - 10:20
 200
 500
10:20 - 10:40
 500
 1000
10:40 - 11:00
 1000
 2000
11:00 - 11:20
 2000
 5000
11:20 - 11:40
 5000
 10000

As you can see, the first two hours are kind of get-your-feet wet, leisurely pace, have some fun. At the 8:45 - 9:00 break someone should ``colour up''' the chips. From here on out the lowest values chips (5pt) have no purpose, so they should be collected and changed into the next higher (25pt) colour. This can happen again at 9:40, 10:20 and 10:40. For our tournament, of the 80 starters only one or two were lost in the first two hours. By 10:00 we were down to 4 tables, by 10:40 were were down to two, and the game ended around 11:30.

For a time keeper we used a cheap wind-up kitchen timer. This has a nice loud bell when it goes off so everyone can hear it. We also announced when the blinds were being raised.

Rebuys

This was an elimination tournament -- once someone runs out of chips, that's it. We did, however, allow rebuys. This should also be posted. All of our rebuys are $40. It's not fair to let someone come in and buy a win, so the rebuys were limited as follows:
Plan on having about 1/2 of the people rebuy. Some will buy multiple times, and others will never rebuy. The 9:00 one is by far the best deal of the night and people flock to it.

Prizes

You'll obviously need the prizes lined up before event night. We chose gift certificates, redeemable for cash. This was the single largest expense. A tournament could easily be held with all prizes donated, but there's just something about gambling that people want a money prize.

Miscellaneous

Now that you've a room full of people, you'll want to extract the maximum amount of donations from them, yes? This is your big chance, so be creative!

Event Night

Okay, you've made it this far, let's continue.

First, make sure you open the doors and are prepared to receive people at least one hour before the game begins. When people arrive, each hands you his ticket and in turn receives a cup of chips. To guarantee fairness, I strongly suggest having each person count his chips at a nearby table. This means you should also have posted the number of each type of chip that should be in the cup. If someone notes an error, you must recount the chips! The cheap plastic ones we used tended to stick together, and of the 10 or so folks who claimed an error, only one turned out to be a real one (yes, our first tournament was held with cheap plastic chips; a mistake we didn't make twice).

Make sure if you're doing a raffle to have someone wandering around selling tickets as soon as people start arriving.

No later than 15 minutes or so before the event have people go to the tables. There are two ways to go about seating : pre-assigned, and seat yourself. A true for-money tournament will use random seat assignments. This is for fairness, and also prevents some common forms of cheating. For a charity game such as this having people seat themselves works fine. If you suspect cheating, or hear complaints, the next event can use random seat assignments.

To kick-off the event, a short discussion of who the Elks are and what they do is in order. We also had an imprompto purple pig presentation and announced the raffles. Finally, rules of the tournament, and some basic instruction -- what to bet, when to bet it. If the crowd has never played or watched Texas Hold'em, having each table play one sample hand might be in order.

Before play begins try to make sure each table has the same number of people. It's better to four tables of seven than three tables of eight and one of four. If possible, combine tables so you've the fewest number.

Once play begins, make sure the raffle person continues push the raffle at each table. Don't announce the special raffle (if you plane one) just yet. There are dollars in those wallets & you want to get the maximum number of them. The only people going home with money in their wallets should be the event winners.

From here on you'll need one or two people who understand the game and how to pot splitting works wandering around making sure everything is running smoothly. You'll also need someone ready to make the rebuys. If you do the final rebuy, make sure you've prepared a lot of pre-counted chips.

The first round is by far the busiest for the floor men as it's when people are just getting started and may not know all of the nuances. Let this one last a while, then a quick smoke/bathroom break. The second round is much smoother.

Between each round try to combine tables -- remember you want the fewest number of tables possible.

About a half hour before the second break, announce the special raffle -- this is when people start looking at their chips & realize there's a good chance they'll need more, and no one can resist spending $1.00 for the chance of getting $34.

The second break is longer and allows you to announce the raffle winners, colour up chips and do the final rebuy. You should also announce the date of the next event if you plan to have one. Most people will still be playing and if they're having fun they'll want to know about the next event. If you really have it together, it would probably be a great time to sell tickets to the next event, or at least get names & email addresses of those who want to come back.

From here on, there will be fewer problems but they are more likely to be more intense. The competition really starts to heat up, and if you're serving alcohol it is also having an effect. For the most part, these problems will also pass smoothly.

Having an aggressive blind schedule, like the one I outlined above, is guaranteed to end the game in a timely fashion.

Postmortem

As with an event, the committee should hold one last meeting to analyze the event. This will include what worked, what didn't, and at least begin discussion on any changes that should be made. This is also a good time to total up the income and expenses to be presented at the next lodge meeting. With any luck everything went off without a hitch, in which case congratulations.

Cheating

In a charity game one really hopes cheating will not be an issue, but here are the most common cheating methods, and ways to defeat them:

Chips

If people know what kind of chips are being used, they might be tempted to bring some of their own. This is a much larger problem if you plan to cash out the chips at the end of the night. Other than gaining an edge, there's no real benefit in a prize-awarding elimination tournament.

Defeat: if possible, add a distinguishing mark to your chips. A dot, or the word, ``Elk,'' or your lodge number.

Soft playing

This is where one player doesn't play as aggressively towards another as normal. Often this will friends playing against each other. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst possible cheater, this is about a 1/2. In an elimination game this type of play is actually worse for both players than the rest of the entrants.

Defeat : random seating

Chip dumping

Chip dumping is when one player purposely loses all of his chips to another. The intent here is to get the  other person as man chips as possible so he'll win the tournament. On a scale of one to ten, this is a ten. If it is noticed both players should be immediately evicted from the game.

Defeat : random seating

Post-script

As I said at the top, this is the second verion of this document. After several events we learned a few valuable lessons. Our first event was a limit game -- there was a predefined limit for each bet. This protects beginners from people who bet aggressively, but is also very difficult to teach. Our later events were no-limit -- the bets can be any size at or over the minimum. This eliminated much confusion and, to my surprise, didn't create any problems with agressive play.

I said it before, I'll say it again, use real chips! If you're in the Santa Cruz area, I've 6000 that I'm willing to lend (drop an email to kyle@casadeyork.com).

Another possible way to make money is sell table sponsorships, or chair sponsorships (each table can be sponsored for $x, and each chair at the final table for $y).