Preachers' Blind Mathematics

This was posted to the Yahoo Group, I'll share it here unless the author otherwise objects.

Quote - Everything Below by "Preacher"

How to hold a tournament in two and a half hours...

(1) Kick everyone's ass in 150 minutes.
or (here comes the math, so duck)

(2) Take the starting chips times the number of players in the tournament,this is the total pool. Figure how many rounds you want per hour (15 minutes rounds are 4 rounds per hour, 20 minutes = 3, 30 minutes = 2). Define how long you want to play (example 2.5 hours). Starting chips/2^(rounds perhour*hours of play)=big blind. Double blinds every round.

So 1500 chips to start, 30 players, 4 hours, 20 minute rounds = 45,000 inchips, 15 minutes rounds = 3 times 4 hours = 12, 2^12 = 4096. 45,000/4,096 =~11, so call it 10 for easy math. (If 2^12 is confusing, it works like this2^2 = 2*2, 2^3 = 2*2*2 (3 twos), 2^4=2*2*2*2 (4 twos), 2^12 =2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2 (12 twos)...)

1. 5/10
2. 10/20
3. 20/40
4. 40/80
5. 80/160
6. 160/320
7. 320/640
8. 640/1280
9. 1280/2560
10. 2560/5120
11. 5120/10240
12. 10240/20480
    

You can see that by round 12 (4th hour) the blinds will force you down to heads up. The math always works. It is possible for someone on the short to hang in there for a while and extend it another round or two but it'sunlikely. I recommend rounding the blinds for ease of play (i.e. 10240/20480becomes 10,000/20,000). I also like an ante of 1% of small (no less than 10 at 1000) to move things along.

At last all that math in college comes to good use.