Tournament poker has become the proving ground for aspiring players looking to make a name for themselves. While more money can be made playing cash games, the prestige and ego boost comes from dominating the tournament scene. If you’re new to tournament poker, welcome to one of the fastest-paced, most action-filled events on the planet.

The first step to dominating poker tournaments is understanding what you’re getting yourself into. Not all tournaments are created equally. Certain tournaments favor more skilled players, while others favor those that need a little Lady Luck to help them get to the finish line. If you’re looking to prove that you have the most skill in the game, you’re going to want to play in the tournaments that predominantly favor the skilled players.

Here is the complete schedule of daily poker tournaments in the Las Vegas area, including Downtown, Henderson & Southeast, North Las Vegas, Summerlin & Northwest, and The Strip. Click on any tournament for comprehensive information and details including buy-ins, admin fees, starting chips, blind structures, days run, and more. Notes on Blinds: This is a standard blind structure for a tournament consisting of 5-50 players. Each player should begin with $1000 in tournament chips (ex. $50 buy-in equals $1000 in tournament chips). If you would like the tournament to last longer, the starting number of chips can be increased to $1500.

The factor that determines which side of the aisle a poker tournament favors is known as the blind structure. The blind structure determines how much play there will be in a tournament. A structure that favors stronger players is one where the average chip stacks (measured in big blinds) stay the deepest for the longest. A structure that favors weaker players is one where the chip stacks (measured in big blinds) stay the shallowest.

Basically, the more room you have to play and make moves and the longer you have to wait for better cards, the more skill is going to be involved. In tournaments where you don’t have a lot of wiggle room, there is a lot more weight placed on what cards you get. In deeper and longer structures, the variance of the cards will be less.

This is a tough concept to put into words, but once it clicks, it will make perfect sense. Here’s an analogy: let’s say that we’re trying to figure out who the best Tetris player is. If you’ve ever played Tetris, you know that the game spits out random blocks, and sometimes you can get unlucky with what blocks come out. If we only let everyone play three games, it’s very possible that the best player in the world could get unlucky all three times and put up bad scores.

However, if we allow the players to play 100 games, the better players are going to rise to the top, because they’re not going to get unlucky run-outs 100 times in a row. This is the same with poker. A deeper and longer structure gives more time for the better players to utilize their skills and not just rely on getting good cards.

This means that if you really are one of the best and want to prove it, you need to be playing in tournaments that allow your skill to shine through. Sure, you can still get unlucky in the best structure in the world, but it will give you more wiggle room to absorb this bad luck and persevere through.

Now that you understand what we are looking for and why we are looking for it, let’s talk about exactly how you identify one of these great structures.

A Complete Picture

We’re going to start out by giving you a statement about several different tournaments. We want you to decide which of these tournaments has the best structure for skilled players:

Tournament 1 – The starting stack is 50,000 chips.
Tournament 2 – The blinds start at 10/20.
Tournament 3 – The levels are two hours long.
Tournament 4 – The tournament is called “The Mega Deepstack Invitational.”

Which of these four tournaments has the best structure for skilled players? It’s a trick question. All of them actually have terrible structures. Tournament 1 has the blinds start at 5k/10. Tournament 2 only starts you with 200 chips. Tournament 3 starts you at 50/100 with 1k chips. Tournament 4 has the same structure as Tournament 3.

The point we’re trying to make here is that the only way to know if a blind structure is any good is to have ALL of the information about the tournament. You need to have information about the starting stack size, blind schedule, and the level duration. Putting all of these pieces together will give you an accurate picture of how the structure stacks up.

You also need to be careful of some of the tricks poker rooms will play to try to make you think a tournament has a great structure, like giving the tournament a cool-sounding name.

We’re going to walk you through each of these components individually and let you know what you should be on the lookout for. Remember, though, you need all of the components together, or else you have no idea whether the structure is good or not.

Starting Stacks Sizes

888 poker app keeps crashing. More is USUALLY good when it comes to stack sizes. However, as we stated, it doesn’t mean much if they increase the blind levels along with the stack sizes. Ideally, we’re looking for a tournament that starts you with at least 100 times the big blinds, but hopefully more. For example, if the blinds start at 25/50, you should hope to see AT LEAST a 5k chip starting stack. More than that is definitely going to be better.

Be careful that you don’t let this fool you. We see players all the time raving that you start with 100k chips or 200k chips in a tournament! They’re excited because they are imagining that size chip stack with the blinds they’re used to. You must tie the stack size in with the blind schedule and then see what the ratio is.

Blind Schedule

The blind schedule refers to the different levels that a poker tournament is offering. You’ll have to study this fairly closely to see any issues, but this is one of the most important factors. For instance, let’s take our example from the last section. Let’s say we have a tournament with 25/50 blinds and a 5k chip starting stack. It’s not the greatest, but we’re initially happy with that.

We look at the blind schedule and realize that it goes 25/50, 50/100, 100/200, 200/400, 400/800, 800/1600, etc. The blinds double every single time they go up. This is insane and is going to shrink that 5k chip stack in a heartbeat. Though things start out great, the doubling blinds are going to get ridiculous as the tournament goes on. This tournament will turn into a super-turbo in a matter of a few levels.

What you should be looking for is a blind schedule that follows a much more “typical” progression. Below, we have what you’ll see in most tournaments. We have a few levels colored in red, and we will address why. It’s also important to point out that we have not included antes in this example, though they are commonly seen in tournaments. We have yet to see a tournament abuse the ante schedule, so it’s not necessary that we cover it here for you. We also only went to the 1500/3000 level, but the structures usually continue on much further. Most of the issues you can find will be visible in this first set of levels.

25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300

200/400
250/500
300/600
400/800
500/1000

600/1200
800/1600
1000/2000
1200/2400
1500/3000

If you see this structure, you can give the tournament a check mark in this category, at least. If the stack sizes and level durations are good, then this would be a great structure. We marked several levels in red because we wanted to point out the levels that get dropped by tournaments the most frequently. Usually, if a tournament has these levels, the structure is going to be good. If a tournament does not have any of these levels, it’s going to be a much faster and less favorable structure.

Should you not play a tournament that doesn’t have the red levels? That’s going to be up to you. We’ve seen some great structures before that are missing one or two of these levels. If they are missing all of them, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play. It just means that you should be aware that the tournament is going to be a faster structure where luck is going to play a larger role.

Great players can still win in faster structures. They’re still going to have an edge. That edge is just going to be d

Texas Holdem Tournament Blinds Schedule