Choosing a Poker Tournament Pay out Structure
Before you begin a poker tournament you need to make clear how much the winners will be paid. The last thing you want is the person who busts out in fourth place to expect to get money, while the three players still remaining in the tournament think that the entire purse goes to them. Shown below is a common payout structure
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Payout Structure
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# Players
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1-10
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11-20
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21-30
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1st
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50%
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50%
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40%
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2nd
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30%
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25%
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25%
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3rd
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20%
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15%
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20%
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4th
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10%
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10%
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5th
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5%
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Once you decide on a pay out structure make you print it out and post it in your poker room. Ideally you should put a copy at each an every table that is playing.
Side Deals
Often times at the end of a poker tournament, especially a small buyin tournament with a slow blind structure, players will be tired of playing poker and will want to end. They will cut a deal between themselves on how to split the prize money. This is allowed as long as all the remaining players agree to the distribution. If any player doesn’t agree to the distribution play continues until there is a winner or all the remaining players agree. As a tournament host, you have nothing to do with how the money is split in a side deal. Your only responsibility is in ensuring that a player who wants to continue playing until there is a winner, or one who isn’t happy with the split percentages, isn’t bullied into agreeing to a deal
Pay outs
There are two ways you can handle pay outs. The first is to give the money to each player as the bust out, the second is to make the payout at the end of the game after there is a winner. In general, the second method is preferable if there are a small number of people getting paid, i.e. if you have a single table and there are 3 people walking away with money. Paying out once at the end of the night helps to ensure that someone doesn’t get over paid earlier in the night resulting in the winner at the end of the night getting short changed. If you have a large tourney, people might not want to wait around after they bust out. If that is the case you can give them the money as the lose the tournament.
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