Hey guys, I was just wondering that I noticed there aren’t any Heads Up tournaments except the ones in the Sit And Go category. What if Replay Poker provided a heads up tournament at a specific time?
We could do registration but then it would close when 16/32/64 players registered so that there is a perfect number for heads up tournaments.
A new round of the tournament would start after all previous rounds were complete and this would go down to a winner.
I thought this would be a new and really exciting form of poker on replay, but I wanted to ask all of you guys out there on the forums what you think and any ideas you have.
I remember this kind of tournament from … another poker site. Takes a good investment of time, but surviving each round is uniquely satisfying. As for registration, you just have some players sit out the first round then integrate them into the second round, if the number registered doesn’t factor out evenly.
I really like this idea. I actually thought of mentioning a similar concept. A Heads Up MTT event like tennis, KNOCK OUT. There is also the option to make it a SnG MTT game. A strange concept that was the first experience I had with actually deep long play tournaments. An SnG is considered a tournament actually, but not IMO.
TBH why not alternate between the two concepts to see whats more popular. HU games are fun & if the games have decent play-ability (deep stack) and the blinds dont raise too fast I certainly would support.
As an SnG MTT you basically get a starting number of chips which is usually 2-4 buy ins for 6 player SnG & its multiple SnG games/tournaments until you dont have enough chips to buy in. This means you get at least 2 chances or 2 bullets to bust out before its all over red rover.
I have noticed there are or were SnG MTT on RP to a limited degree limited to the SnG tab. I would love to see some added to the MTT section.
I’m down for this if they ever do it. I’ve even been thinking about having an informal organized tournament. If there’s enough interest in this thread perhaps I’ll try to do the organizing.
yeah team leaders or basic event organisers would be good. Send out invites etc to friends to join MTT for registration. If enough people join then a MTT match can start.
I think multiple stakes would be better. Many players would miss out if they cant afford 100k entry fee. Do you think there would be enough demand at even 50k stakes? Do you think at the peak traffic on RP there would be 16 or 32 players wanting to join a HU MTT match?
Even at only 5k 16 player entry with 10% entry fee the payout would be 72K divided between the top 4 or 8 players etc.
Would this be using brackets? Single elimination, with a loser’s bracket, would reduce the field fairly quick. I would be fine with multiple days, but not sure how it would work for me when i showed up to my job everyday, or if i lived in a substantially different time zone. Maybe preliminaries could be dealt with regionally until the field was small enough for a weekend.
Would winner take all, or maybe the 4 finalist split accordingly? A lot of chips, or merch, should be sitting at the end of the line. Heads up really makes me feel tired, and a little mean.
I like @DogsOfWar’s idea for different buy-in amounts. Not so much for people like me, who budget as poorly as i play, but to establish different skill levels. Of course that means running 2 tournaments.
I’m also looking forward to a progressive bounty tournament on the site. Someone from replay told me they had plans to add one to the lobby. Never played in one, but they sound interesting. Instead of a set amount going to your account, when you bust someone, only half goes to the bank, and the other half is added to your existing bounty. If someone had a good day, they could be playing with a nice prize for someone to take, or for themselves if they’re the last one standing
For the tournament I’m organizing, it’s a round robin format, so everyone will get to play against everyone else in the tournament, best 2 out of 3, the player with the most wins will be the declared winner. The chips won will be the chips won in each game, as I have no way of awarding any other award. Being the named winner is for prestige, and whatever chips you take out of the rounds you play. You can work out the best time to play with your opponent, and I’m giving plenty of time to coordinate the scheduling of your matches. I do not know how many players will register, but I’m expecting a small field, so I’m not that worried about narrowing it down quickly, and I think the round robin format is more fair since everyone will face everyone, everyone has an equally difficult schedule to play.
@Waidus, @DogsOfWar, @Matchstk, @Goatsoup, @SUPERPOTATO17 – you all expressed an interst by responding to the thread – are any of you guys planning to register for this event? So far it’s just me and @WATCHOUT8, and we definitely need a few more players, or else it’ll just be a 2-player tournament.
Yes I am in but will not play for less then 50k … don’t want to be rude but i’m not having a crap load of players whom have small banks and hate my guts getting to take me on for any less …
(I am willing to be a bit flexible Pug and will send u a friend request to discuss terms)
Regarding the buy-in, I can appreciate your reasoning to want to play for 50k min. But please consider:
The suggested 10k stakes is to keep the overall buy for the sum of the round-robin games reasonable for most players who would like to play.
If we have 3 games times 5 opponents, that’s just 150,000, which isn’t a bad buy-in for a mid/high-stakes MTT. With @Goatsoup as the 3rd confirmed player, we’re looking at 2 opponents for a total of 6 games each, which is 60k total buy-in, which is equivalent to a “high” stakes MTT according to Replay (50,0001 - 1M = “high” stakes).
Keeping in mind that with more players, it’ll get progressively more expensive to play the full round robin. If we were to get above 34 participants, which seems unlikely for this inaugural tournament, that would push the total buy-in to over 1M at the suggested 10k level, which is “elite” stakes territory.
Of course, with each game won, you’ll be pulling chips out, so this tournament will be paying off a lot more, and more frequently, so if you do reasonbly well or just break even, it probably won’t break most player’s bankroll to play.
I’ll happily play anyone who wants to go higher at up to 100k per game, but if we do end up with some lower-bankrolled players who can’t play comfortably at 50k, please accomodate them.
Sure, Pug, I’ll play. Still have questions about the format, tho. Say you have 10 participants, and starting stack is 5K. Does this mean I pay my entry fee, then play 9 games? For each game I supply 5,000 chips which are gone if I lose, but doubled if I win. Therefore, I need 45K chips, (in case I lose all the games) plus buy-in.
On track, so far?
Now suppose the beings that won’t be named smile upon me, and I win 6 of the matches. Is 6/9 the number that determines my rank? What is the tie breaker?
I always assumed when the pros played in a HU tourney, a bracket system of some type was used, but TBH, I have no idea.
Great! Waidus, welcome aboard. I’ve added you to the roster, which makes 4 of us now.
Thanks for all the questions, too. I’ll answer them:
I don’t know how professional tournaments are run, this was just something I came up with myself. I expect that for larger tournaments, it becomes more attractive to work with a bracket/elimination system. I did think about doing that, but without having some strong ranking system (Replay’s system based purely on bankroll size isn’t really adequate to assess a player’s skill level, and there’s nothing else available, really) I could only match people up randomly, and then also I’d have to worry about finding enough players to fill a bracket, and getting a full bracket requires a field of 2^n players, and it quickly became clear to me that a smallish tournament would run better in round-robin fashion, so I went with that.
The Rules tab on the tournament spreadsheet explains how everything works, as far as buy-in goes. But for clarity, I’ll explain it further.
You need enough chips to buy in to play each player 3 times. For each match, you will want to play all 3 games, even if you win the first two, because it’s the number of Wins that determines your ranking in the tournament – missing that 3rd win for the match sweep will put you behind those players who do play all 3 games and win them. Plus, it denies the player who loses their first two games in a match a last opportunity to come out of the match with at least 1 win.
We’re going to play the games out at SNG tables, not Ring tables. You and your opponent can negotiate the buy-in amount that you’re comfortable playing your 3 games together at; my suggested buy-in leve is 10k. You can go lower or higher depending on what you want, the more important thing is to agree and get the games played. The goal in the tournament is to rack up as many wins as possible, and chips are only relevant if you care about them.
So, say we end up with 16 players who sign up. Each player will play 15 other opponents for 3 games, a total of 45 buy-ins are needed. So at 10k/game, you’d need 450k to play through the full tournament.
Since you get chips out of each game if you win that game, you might be able to get by with fewer than the full buy-in, if you are a good enough player to profit through the tournament. But it’s not something I recommend, as you can’t count on winning enough games to be profitable and earn enough chips to cover the remaining buy-ins you’d need to play if you’re coming in short. I’d rather see you negotiate down to a stakes level that you can afford to play. Rich players will have to be understanding and accomodate low-bankroll players who choose to participate. It’s supposed to be a fun, yet competitive, tournament, and while winning a lot of chips is fun, the main thing is, again, to play and win as many HU games as you can against the tournament field.
Starting stacks are whatever they are for the HU table you buy in to, which varies according to the stakes you buy in at. I mostly play 100k HU tables, sometimes I’ll play 25k tables, and the starting stacks there are 3k and 2.5k, respectively.
Tournament rankings will be based on the number of games won, and it’s probably the case that there will be a tie at the end of the full run of the round-robin series. I hadn’t really considered how to break ties, but it seems a HU game between the tied players would do it, or possibly a multi-way table in the event of a 3- or 4-way tie, or a mini-bracket playoff between multiple tied players.
Technically, this format is structured in such a way that it is, de facto a rebuy tournament, since each game in the tournament series has its own buy. There’s nothing I can do to force everyone to play all their games, but if a player decides they must drop out of the tournament, they’ll simply be dropped from the tournament, and have no further opportunity to win games. This will be unfair to players who did not have an opportunity to play against them yet, as the players who did and won games, will have won games that the rest of the tournament field did not have an opportunity to win. So in the interest of sportsmanship, I hope everyone who signs up is willing to commit to playing the whole thing through all the way.
At some point in the tournament, there will be players who have no realistic chance of cashing, and see no real up-side to play on. Sportsmanship will work with some. i would probably dive in to the role of spoiler. However, I think you should really try to avoid a different amount of games from which gain wins.
Forfeits are one idea, but still gives some players an advantage. Perhaps forfeits could yield 2 pts. instead of 3.
Another way to go would be to use the percentage of wins to games played.
Maybe a small slice of the prize pool could go to finishers who didn’t cash.
If an even number of players have no opponent, they could play each other again. Problem there is an odd number of people needing someone to play.
I’m throwing things out there without thinking them through. There are sure to be other solutions, or drawbacks to the ones I suggested, but I think creating a level playing field should be a high priority. I’d think it unfair to win 30 of 40 games, and lose to someone who won 31 of 46.
On a personal note, an estimate of how much time I’d need to block out would be helpful.
