We did our first Hold'em tournament last year and it was a great success.
Here's some important points...
It is very likely that there are already tournaments being held in your local area. I would recommend contacting these halls and seeing how things work with them.
For example, I was able to get the local Legion for free and then ran the tournament myself. I even ran side tournaments for those that were knocked out. Another Hall provides the space for free, but they want to run the side games.
In my area we are allowed to get a permit once a year to hold three raffles. Since we have raffles at the Open House and then again at our Golf Tournament fundraiser, we can only run the Poker Tournament once a year. Overall I found that we profitted about $500 from the Open House raffles, but over $2000 from the Poker tournament, so we may be looking to cut back on the Open House/Golf Tournament raffles.
We did not promote the event through the school as this was a very new concept for my area, an Elementary school holding a "gambling" type event. The Principal was ok with the idea as long as we held it off school grounds.
I had fliers that I posted at the hall and at some other local bars/restaurants, etc. We put an ad into the local paper as well. I also attended a couple of events prior to mine and passed around fliers there. Best yet during one of these events I signed up to be notified by e-mail of upcoming events, and this led to a huge e-mail listing of poker players that I will be using when I hold my next event.
I ended up going to the local NAMCO pool store and found cases of quality chips for sale for $30. I ended up purchasing around 10 of these, investing around $350, including enough decks of cards so each table could have 2 (a red and a blue deck).
I purchased a computer program for running tournament, but this is probably a bit of an overkill. If you have a good timer (if you plan to run side events you'll need an extra one or two) that would work as well.
I provided each player with $2000 in chips and had the blinds set at a 15 minute interval. Once they hit the $200/$400 blind structure a $25 ante started. I don't have the specific blind structure with me, but it started at $25/$50 and pretty much doubled to $50/$100, $100/$200, $200/$400, etc.
The chips normally come in white, red, blue, green and black. These are common, but specialty chips can be any color. I'd recommend going with the common colors. I used white for $25, red for $100, Blue for $500, green for $1000 and black for $5000.
The quantity of chips I provided was 8 white, 8 red and two blue. I had these separated in baggies, which I handed out when the players signed up.
The cost to play was $50 and I guaranteed 1/2 of the money back. I promoted it as that, and stated $1000 for first place, based upon 100 players.
I think next time I would nor provided the chips in baggies and would bring the chips to the table once the players were seated.
The way I seated players was based on when they came in. The first player received table 1/seat 1. second player got table 2, seat 1. and so on. I didn't know how many players we would receive so I only seated 8 tables until I saw that we were going to have more.
We had about 100 players and I paid out the top 10, which was the entire final table. At the start of the event I had tables of 8 players, but went to 10 for the final.
I had a runner go and obtain Visa check cards from the local mall for the prizes as cash is supposedly, at least where I am located, a no-no.
I did have to contact the town police and have a police escort in site. I believe the cost was $175 for 4 hours. I think we went a bit over that, but the officer was really cool about everything, and he does these all the time.
I ran a side event of the best hand of the day. All players who wished to participate would put $10 in, with 50% for the prize. The players who shows down the best hand of the day would win the prize. Around half the players entered, so the winner received $250 or so. I had 8" x 11" cards printed for this and once a player who was in the best hand of the day showed down at leadt trips I taped the exact hand to beat up on the wall. If someone beat that hand then I put up the new hand to beat. If someone ended up getting the exact same hand (unlikely) then the first player to get it would win. Meaning say quad aces with a kind kicker was the hand to beat, but then twenty minutes later someone got the same exact hand, if that hand ended up staying the best then the first player who got it wins.
Overall this was great. There was some extraa work because I had to purchase the chips, cards, make up a flier, etc.; but it will now be so much easier to pull off. We had a couple PTO ladies act as waitresses and they donated their tips.
So we ended up bringing in about $2500 from the entry fees, another $250 from the best hand of the day, about $100 from tips and another $240 from side games. After expences, which other than new cards we'll not have to pay for again, we profited over $2700. This was really just four or five of us working for five hours or so, which is pretty damn good!!!
I would advise against rebuys as it will cause some players to play badly, which will turn some players off.
Anyway, good luck and if you need anything else let me know.
PresidentJim
