As you play more tournaments and gain more experience you can make adjustments that suit your particular situation. If you find that the tournament you select is playing longer or shorter than you wish, you could reduce or increase the amount of starting chips, skip or add a level(s) or increase or decrease the length of levels.

Our sample blind structures are based upon an initial starting stack of 1000. But, they can be adjusted and used for any chip values you want to use. If you want to play at values comparable to the WPT or WSOP, start with 10,000 or 100,000 chips and multiply the blinds by 10 and 100, respectively.

Blind Structure for 2 Hour Tournament 1000 Starting Chips 15 Minutes per Level
Level	Small Blind	Big Blind
1	10	20
2	15	30
3	25	50
4	50	100
5	100	200
6	200	300
7	300	400
8	400	800
9	600	1200
10	800	1600
11	1000	2000
12	1500	3000

It is recommended to play a tournament of this length as a "freeze-out" (no rebuy/add-on).

Blind Structure for 2-3 Hour Tournament 1000 Starting Chips 20 Minutes per Level
Level	Small Blind	Big Blind
1	10	20
2	15	30
3	25	50
4	50	100
5	100	200
6	150	300
7	200	400
8	300	600
9	400	800
10	600	1200
11	800	1600
12	1000	2000

Blind Structure for 3-4 Hour Tournament 1000 Starting Chips 20 Minutes per Level
Level	Small Blind	Big Blind
1	10	20
2	15	30
3	25	50
4	50	100
5	75	150
6	100	200
7	150	300
8	200	400
9	300	600
10	400	800
11	500	1000
12	600	1200
13	800	1600
14	1000	2000

Blind Structure for 5-6 Hour Tournament 1000 Starting Chips 30 minutes per Level
Level	Small Blind	Big Blind
1	10	20
2	15	30
3	25	50
4	50	100
5	75	150
6	100	200
7	150	300
8	200	400
9	300	400
10	400	800
11	500	1000
12	600	1200
13	800	1600
14	1000	2000

When using one of the above sample structures, here are a couple of options for valuing and distributing 1000 starting chips:

Value	Usual Color*	Quantity per Player	Quantity per Player (Option 2)
5	Red	5	10
25	Green	7	10
100	Black	8	7

* The colors you choose are dependant on how many chips of each color you have, so you may need to use different color designations to make sure you have sufficient chips. This is especially true if you have re-buys or add-ons as you will typically want to provide them in higher valued chips. At the end of this page is additional information on chip colors and values.

There are a number of factors that determine how long a poker tournament will last. Some are fairly easy to predict, while it is more difficult to determine or quantify the impact of others. The most important factors in determining how long a tournament will last are identified below. These factors need to be considered in combination with one another.

The ratio of starting chips to starting big blind. The higher this ratio, the longer a tournament is likely to take. The lower the ratio, the shorter the tournament. In a home poker tournament of a few hours a ratio of 50:1 to 100:1 is the most reasonable. For example, if starting with 1000 chips, a first big blind of 20 would be a 50:1 ratio or a first big blind of 10 would be a 100:1 ratio.

How steeply the blinds increase. If the blinds increase at a steep rate, the tournament will be shorter. If the increase at a slower rate, the tournament will be lengthened. As a rule of thumb, the blinds from one level to the next should never be more than doubled.

The length of the levels. The longer each level lasts, the longer it will take to play a tournament. With shuffling, dealing and other delays, live poker tournaments comsume significantly more time per hand than on-line tournaments. The absolute minimum time a level should last in a home poker tournament is 15 minutes.

There are other factors that may have limited or variable affects on tournament length:

Limit vs. No limit. In a limit tournament it will usually take longer for players to begin to get knocked out. Overall, as a factor by itself, there will be little or no difference in the length of a limit tournament compared to a no limit tournament.

Re-buys or add-ons. You should certainly expect that a tournament will last longer if re-buys or add-ons are allowed, but, it is difficult to predict how much longer. The exact affect on length will be determined by how many players make a re-buy or add-on, and you can not predict that accurately prior to the start of the tournament.

The cut off time to re-buy/add-on, The longer the time you allow for re-buys or add-ons, the longer the tournament will last. Roughly estimate that the length of time allowed for re-buys/add-ons will add a similar amount of time to the tournament. For home tournaments it is suggested to make the cut-off period no longer than the end of the 2nd or 3rd level.

The number of players. Usually, the more players in a tournament, the longer it will last. More players certainly makes the tournament more complicated, especially if playing more than 1 table. In addition to longer playing time, figure on extra time to get things going, to oversee and coordinate, for breaks, coloring up chips and for re-drawing and organizing the final table.

Playing styles. A preponderance of tight players will lengthen a tournament. Having more aggresive players is likely to shorten it. On the other hand, tight players may be less inclined to make re-buys, while aggresive players may be more likely.

New or inexperienced players. Generally, new or inexperienced players will take longer to make decisions and take their actions. If so, it will result in fewer hands being played at each level and should tend to lengthen the tournament.

Do not forget to build in time for periodic breaks, for example, one 5-10 minute break every hour. Use break times to color up and remove small denomination chips when they are no longer needed.

Before organizing a lengthly (5-6 hour) tournament give serious consideration to things like these:

Accounting for breaks, your tournament is going to last an hour or more beyond the actual playing time.

People are going to get thirsty and hungry and will be expecting you to provide drinks and food. Besides that, you are the one who is going to gave to clean up.

If you get eliminated early in the tournament, do you really want to wait for several hours for it to finish and your guests to leave?

The most frequently chip colors purchased for home poker games are white, red, blue, green and black. While there are no official chip color and value standards, here are some commonly observed values.

Chip Color	Low Denomination	High Denomination
White	1	1000 or 10,000
Yellow	2	2000
Red	5	5000
Blue	10 or 50	500 or 50,000
Green	25	25,000
Black	100	100,000
Purple	500	5000 or 50,000