In July, 2010; Rod ran a series to help new hosts run a perfect home game. While highly informative, It could use a little tweaking.

Specifically, the section on Blinds.

Blinds can ruin an otherwise awesome game. So know what you are doing here. There are so many factors to consider, I will create an example, and you can derive the rest from there - or leave comments, and I can tell you how I would adjust.

Before I start, let me tell you what NOT to do. EVER. These things suck, and many people don't know they suck until they see things done right.

DON'T- raise the blinds whenever players are eliminated. This makes for very slow early levels, rewarding tight players. The more you reward the tight players, the longer the early levels last. It's a vicious cycle of boredom, until players start getting knocked out. Then the blind levels start going up every few hands. I've played in games like this that started at 7pm and ended around 3am. I've also seen then wrap up in under 2 hours. I did not attend a 3rd time.

DON'T- make up blind levels on the fly. Everyone deserves the right to know what the levels will be, and determine their play style appropriately.

DON'T- make the amount of time at each blind level too short. Home games tend to play slower as players are talking, not paying attention, and collecting chips when they should be dealing. If each blind level is just 10 minutes, you might only get in a couple of hands before the next level.

DON'T- forget to allow time for breaks. Drinkers need to refill their drinks, others will need to use the restroom, and smokers need to go outside to burn one (I do not allow any of those activities at the table) scheduled breaks allow these activities, plus cross-table socialization without the pressure of missing hands or slowing/halting game-play.

DON'T- make the starting blinds too big! If your Big Blind in level 1 is 200, and you start with 5000 in chips, a calling a minimum raise pre-flop through the flop-turn-river is 20% of your stack. One guy with a minimum re-raise after you, and you could be out 40% in one hand. No chance for the loose player to play his game unless they get lucky in the first few hands.

1) Players. Before you determine the blinds, ask yourself this: how far are people traveling? sometimes, K-J beats A-A. 2 pair, trips, even a backdoor flush can send someone home early. So if anyone traveled more than 15 minutes, they deserve more than 15 minutes of fun. For our example, we will assume you have 8 players driving across town, 30 minutes each way.

2) Rebuys. Rebuys carry 2 big risks: loose play, and more chips (and the risk of you running out of chips). If your guests are all the happy go lucky, bluff till you drop types, then rebuys are fine (as long as you don't run out of chips). But if any of your guests are conservative, the loose play *will* annoy them. $20 may not be much to some players, and they can rebuy their fool heads off, while $20 may be the monthly entertainment budget for others. In our example, We will assume a mix of players, both wealthy and the recently unemployed factory worker.

3) Number of Chips. You can't play with more chips than you have, So your starting stacks and rebuys will be influenced by the number of players and the number of chips you have available. Our example will reflect a medium sized case of 500 chips in various denominations, with a total chip value of 26,000

4) How late will you play? Casinos have blinds for a reason. It allows them to predict an end time. While you don't need to pay dealers, or open up the room for another tournament; knowing how late the guests need to pay for a babysitter, or if you should be playing tonight when you have plans for tomorrow morning are factors you need to consider. I have worked out a complex spreadsheet that allows me to predict what time my tournaments will end (largely accurate to within a few minutes). A good rule of thumb for home games: The tournament will end about 5-10 minutes after the big blind reaches the level that players started the tournament with. If you have rebuys, it will go a little longer with each rebuy. Don't forget to calculate in time for breaks.

That's it! now looking at our example, this is how I would lay out the Blind Structure:
Because we have players driving in, making a 1 hour round trip, we will allow rebuys, so a bad beat early in the night send them packing. To accommodate our friend who is down on his luck, only 1 rebuy will be allowed per player. This will tighten up the loose play, but not too much. You could also make the game Limit Holdem for the first hour, but I don't like this as much, mostly because Limit is a different game.

Our players will each start with 2000 in chips. That's 200 big blinds in level 1! That allows for any style of play early on. It also leaves 10,000 in chips in the case. This allows for coloring up chips. If each player started with 20 Red chips (value 5) and 20 Green chips (value 25) we would need 4800 in chips to handle the coloring up. The extra chips will also help cover rebuys. My group averages 1 rebuy for every 3 players, so we should have enough. If we have more rebuys, we may have to recycle the red chips, revaluing them at 1000. We could also have reduced the starting stack for more breathing room.
We will start at 7pm, and plan to wrap up at midnight, so the blinds will be 15 minutes long. Since we can estimate 16 blind levels, cutting just 2 minutes off each level will wrap up the event by 11:30.

Level Small Blind Big Blind
I 5 10
II 10 20
III 15 30
IV 20 40
Scheduled Break: 10 min. Remove Red Chips
V 25 50
VI 50 100
VII 75 150
VIII 100 200
Scheduled Break: 10 min. No More Rebuys
IX 150 300
X 200 400
XI 300 600
XII 400 800
Scheduled Break: 10 min. Remove Green Chips
XIII 500 1000
XIV 600 1200
XV 700 1500
XVI 1000 2000
Scheduled Break: 5 Minutes (players often vote to skip this break)
XVII 1500 3000
XVIII 2000 4000
IXX 2500 5000
XX 3000 6000
XXI 4000 8000