What a blind structure is
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A blind structure for your home tournament
The three paces every league starts with, how long each level runs and where the ante and the break fit.
What a blind structure is
A blind structure is the list of the tournament’s levels: what each blind is worth and how many minutes each level lasts. It sets the pace of the night. Blinds that rise slowly leave room to play; blinds that rise fast squeeze the table and send everyone home earlier.
The three paces every league starts with
- Normal2015min a level
- Turbo1510min a level
- Hyper10min a level
All three have the same blinds. Only the time changes: the levels before the break are longer, and the ones after it shorter. Whoever arrives early gets plenty of poker, and the final table does not run into the small hours.
Blinds your chips can pay
Every blind of the night gets paid with the chips in your set, with no change. With 100 and 500 as the smallest chips, the values have to work with them: that is why it is 100/300 and not 150/300. In this case there is no 50 chip to pay an odd amount or make change. If you do not know yet how many chips to give each player, start with the chip calculator.
| Level | Blinds | Starts | Min |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100/200 | 20:00 | 15 |
| 2 | 100/300 | 20:15 | 15 |
| 3 | 200/400 | 20:30 | 15 |
| 4 | 200/500 | 20:45 | 15 |
| 5 | 300/600 | 21:00 | 15 |
| 6 | 400/800 | 21:15 | 15 |
| 7 | 500/1,000 | 21:30 | 15 |
| 8 | 600/1,200 | 21:45 | 15 |
| 9 | 800/1,600 | 22:00 | 15 |
| 10 | 1,000/2,000 | 22:15 | 15 |
| 11 | 1,200/2,400Late reg closes | 22:30 | 15 |
| Break | 22:45 | 10 | |
How long each level runs
Pick the pace by when the night has to end. A number that helps: how long it takes until late registration closes, when nobody else can buy in and the tournament starts to shrink.
Until late registration closes, at level 11
- Normal220minutes
- Turbo165minutes
- Hyper110minutes
With Turbo, a tournament that starts at 20:00 closes registration at 22:45. If your table usually empties around midnight, that is a good pace. If people stay late, Normal leaves more room to play; for a short night, Hyper closes registration in under two hours.
The big blind ante
The ante is a forced bet on top of the blinds, and it is common in tournaments. In the format many tournaments use today, the big blind ante, the player in the big blind also pays one big blind for the whole table. One person pays, nobody collects a chip from everyone, and the hand starts right away.
Early on the ante barely matters: stacks are deep and the pot only grows a little. It does its work late. With the blinds high, players with short stacks are forced into an aggressive move sooner, since every orbit costs 2.5BB no matter what.
The table above shows the blinds only. The structures every league gets in Pirapoker already come with a big blind ante on every level, the same size as the big blind.
The break
Put the break right after the level where late registration closes. Whoever arrived late has already sat down, nobody buys in anymore, and there is time to check the cash calmly. It is also the time for the add-on and for coloring up the 100 chips, which stop being useful at the next level.
