Poker League Structure

[C3Events]

To all,

I'm looking for some advice in how to better structure a poker league that i am involved with. We will be growing it as we received a lot of interest, but I had some fundamental issues with the league, and I'm looking for advice.

Our league was 40 people over 13 weeks. Each week we paid $100+$10, $50 per night went to the nightly pool and $50 went to the final prizes. The winner with the most points won a $13000 WSOP Main Event package. (nightly points ranged from 50 for 40th to 200 for 1st with bonus points for top 5 finish in the night) The rest of the 39 players received chips (from 20,000-45000) and played for the 2nd $13k package. (We all added an additional $300 and played for 2 WSOP packages on the last day)

The winner of the most points was well deserved, he played consistent solid poker throughout and earned the package. The problem I have is the other 2 packages ended up being won by 2 of the bottom players. The reason that we did the final tournament was to ensure all players return every week, without asking for all the $ up front, which no one would have wanted or agreed to do. This way their was always incentive to keep playing, for the final tournament. (If you missed more than 2 nights you were out and the seat was given to a new entry)

I would like to know if there is a better point system, and a way to keep all players interested in playing thoughout the league, but with rewarding good play throughout, and bad play to be penalized.. Any thoughts?

Dan

[Nick C]

Dan,
The tournament you are running is on a much larger scale than the one I used to deal for. I will give you a few ideas that might help keep players interested after they are hopelessly out of contention.
 I dealt to twelve players on the second Tuesday of each month. That's right-12 players. The buy-in was very similar to yours ($100+10) from each player. At the end of the year 5 of the 12 would be sent to Las Vegas. The top finisher would receive a $2000 WSOP buy-in along with air-fare , hotel accommodations and a little spending $$$. Four or five of the others would receive air-fare hotel and some cash for gambling.
The tricky part was keeping them interested in the final months when it was impossible to win anything.
Here's what we did.
$500 had to be paid up-front, with $400 automatically applied to the last four months (non-refundable). A substitute player could be used in the event that you could not attend one or two events.
The point system was very simple...first player busted got 1 point, second player 2 points....the winner 12 points! I think the lower numbers might not make the chance for the prize so, well...out of reach.
The incentive to hang around for the final week could be a random seat drawing, or something to that effect that could only be won by one of the out of the money players, like a free trip.

Another interesting feature was...all players shared in a % of any money won by the grand prize winner! Could you imagine your winner winning the WSOP Main Event!

I know that our players really had a great time with the tournament. The structure did not give much to the monthly winners (I think it was 40% with 60% for the final), but the players all looked forward to getting together. It was amazing how competitive the tournament became. There were times that 3 or 4 players were still competing for at least a trip to Las Vegas, right up until the final monthly event.

Good Luck! I hope this gives a few ideas you can use.