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The calculator below is designed to formulate an optimal, balanced blind structure for your tournament. It is also built into the Travis Poker Timer software, so you can quickly calculate your perfect blind structure when setting up your tournament. If you need to start the first round with a particular big blind value, enter it here. PokerDIY Tourney Manager is a free poker clock/blind timer to help manage your home poker tournaments.It is easy to use, looks good and runs on any computer. Whether you plan to organize home or professional poker tournaments, you’ll need a strong poker timer to bring players all the information they need at the right time. Poker Tournament Supervisor is not just a poker timer, it’s a complete poker tournament manager solution!Powerful database, incredible customization possibilities, exporting capability, useful stats, email functionality.
Have you ever held a home poker tournament and wished that were was a better way to keep track of the blind levels? As long as you have a computer somewhere near where you are playing (and laptops are very handy for this) you are in luck! There are a number of tournament clock software products available today. They come with preset blind structures, like you might find in Full Tilt Poker software, and also allow you to enter a custom blind structure. Most poker tournament clocks have audio and visual alerts for when blind levels are approaching completion and when they actually do change. You can pause the clock in case someone spills a drink and even modify the blind structure on the fly if the tournament is going too slow.
For any home poker tournament organizer some kind of tournament clock software is a necessity. Some of the options available include Poker Tournament Supervisor, Poker Timer, and The Tournament Director. All of these are excellent pieces of poker tournaments clock software.
The Poker Time is a tournament management system for a poker home game or large-scale event.
5.00 out of 5
Fully customizable poker tournament software.
5.00 out of 5
A must-have tournament clock for a large poker tournament or home game.
3.90 out of 5
DD Poker is an excellent tool to help the novice player improve
3.83 out of 5
A web-based timer for your next poker home game.
3.80 out of 5
PokerTimer is an easily navigable tournament management software
2.45 out of 5
An easy-to-use poker tournament management system and clock.
Not Rated Yet
No Video Available
Fully customizable poker home game clock.
Not Rated Yet
The blind structure (or schedule) is one of the most important details of running a successful tournament. Gradual increases of the blinds at each level and finishing on time are characteristics of a good blind structure.
To calculate a blind structure, the minimum information you need is the number of players, target duration, and the starting blind level (which is usually the smallest chip denomination you have). It is also necessary to know how many chips there will be in play and how many rounds there will be. The blind calculator tool below can take care of that and help set up your perfect structure.
To calculate a blind structure, you need the starting blind level, the estimated total value of the tournament chips in play (initial buy-ins plus rebuys and add-ons) and the desired length of the tournament. Use the tool below to help set up your perfect structure.
This section discusses some tournament blind structure theory, which explains why the PokerSoup.com tournament blind structure calculator suggests blind levels the way it does and what you can change to create the right blind structure for your game.
Starting Number of Blinds
Texas Holdem Timer And Blinds
Most tournaments start with 50-100 big blinds. Anything around 200 big blinds is considered a 'deep stack' tournament. Deep stack tournaments are considered to be full of skillful poker play and not just pushing your money all in before the flop. The latter occurs quickly in tournaments that start with less than 50 big blinds, which are also aptly nick-named 'luck-fests'. There just aren't enough chips to maneuver and play real poker.
If all other variables are held constant, starting a tournament with larger chip stacks will increase the length of the game.
Rebuys and Add-ons
The number of rebuys and add-ons in a tournament also effect the total number of chips in play during a tournament. If no other changes are made, more rebuys and add-ons make for a longer tournament.
Blind Level Round Length
Most live tournaments employ blind level lengths of 15, 20, 30, 45, or 60 minutes. The blind calculator can calculate blinds for any of these blind levels. With a set tournament length, longer blind levels result in less number of rounds and shorter blind levels result in more rounds.
Gradual Blind Increase
The greatest benefit of using the PokerSoup.com tournament blind structure calculator is the assurance of constantly increasing blind amounts. This is an important aspect of tournament play. If the blinds increase (preferably slowly) at a constant rate, players do not spend an inordinate amount of time being deep- or short-stacked and there are no game-altering blind increases in the middle of the tournament.
Poker Timer Poker Tournament Timer Free Poker Blinds Countdown Time
For example, if the blinds increase from 150/300 to 200/400, that is an increase of 33%, or (200+400)/(150+300). This is a comfortable increase. Similarly, in the later stages of the tournament after many players are knocked out, a blind increase from 3000/6000 to 4000/8000 is also 33%.
End Goal
Eventually, the blinds (and antes) induce action to end the tournament. After all, a tournament usually does have a set duration (or a goal, anyway). As a player, it is up to you to figure out how aggressive it is necessary to play in order to keep up with the blinds. Constant gradual increases make this easier to figure out.