Poker tournaments can last from a few minutes to a couple of weeks, as in the case of The World Series of Poker. Determining how long a poker tournament you are planning to enter is an important aspect to consider when deciding which to enter.
Expected Play Time of The Tournaments at The Lodge Austin and The Lodge San Antonio
On average, you can expect daily poker tournaments to last three to six hours at any card room that offers them. Most of the tournaments on the schedule at both the Austin and San Antonio locations are what are commonly known as “daily tournaments.” The “daily” in “daily tournament” doesn’t necessarily mean you should plan for the tournament to last the entire day should you make a deep run. Both Austin (The Daily Kickoff) and San Antonio (The Breakfast Tournament) have a tournament that starts every morning at 10:15 am.
Using The Daily Kickoff as an example, let’s take a look at a few key elements of the structure of The Daily Kickoff that can help us to get a good guess on how long this tournament will take. Remember, many factors can change how long a particular tournament takes, which will look to in more depth later.
- Starting stack is 20k. Players can rebuy at the start of the tournament, giving them a starting stack of 35k.
- Subsequent rebuys are 15k.
- Players may rebuy for 15k to add to their stack during the 1st break.
- Levels last for 15 minutes during registration. Registration ends after the first break
- After registration, levels last for 10 minutes.
Looking at how long each level lasts, it would be pretty safe to assume that this tournament will not last all day, and that’s before we even know the structure level of the tournament.
| Level | Blinds | Big Blind Ante |
| 1 | 100-200 | 200 |
| 2 | 200-400 | 400 |
| 3 | 300-600 | 600 |
| 4 | 400-800 | 800 |
| 5 | 500-1,000 | 1,000 |
| 6 | 1,000-1,500 | 1,500 |
| 7 | 1,000-2,000 | 2,000 |
| 8 | 1,500-3,000 | 3,000 |
| 9 | 2,000-4,000 | 4,000 |
By taking a look at the blind structure sheet we can see that tournament directors only plan for nine levels in this particular tournament. Remember, the first four levels are 15 minutes (one hour), and then the remainder of the tournament has 10-minute levels. If the tournament makes it to level nine, that is five more levels (50 minutes). In just tournament time alone, we are at 1 hour and 50 minutes. This is a very good starting point to determine how long any tournament will last, at a minimum. However, there are other factors of a poker tournament that will add time to the tournament that you can expect.
What Other Factors Contribute to How Long a Poker Tournament Will Last?
Reading the tournament structure and blind structure of a tournament will give you a pretty good guess of how long a tournament will last, but there are some other things to consider.
- After the registration period ends in a tournament you can expect a short break while tournament directors “chip up” (replace your smaller denomination chips for bigger ones. Example, your ten 100-dollar chips now become a single 1000-dollar chip) These breaks almost always coincide with the player break, which in the case of this tournament is five minutes.
- Mistakes Happen, which may cause unexpected pauses in a poker tournament. Perhaps a pot is pushed to the wrong player. A pause may be implemented by the tournament director to determine the rightful winner. That may include consulting video, taking more time.
- People slowplay. It’s not always intentional, but sometimes, especially deep in tournaments, people take longer to make decisions.
The Discrepancy in Time Between Different Tournament Times
So far we have learned that the time of a poker tournament will largely be determined by how fast blinds are raised and the number of entrants. However, at the beginning, we talked about how a poker tournament can last from minutes to days. Why is that?
At large championship series events (such as the World Series of Poker), they usually offer single table satellite tournaments that if you win you will earn entry into the championship event. Sometimes these tournaments have as few as three people, with the winner earning the entry into the “main” tournament. These tournaments sometimes start off with as little as 500 in chips with blinds as high as 50-100. These tournaments can, and often do, run as little as one hand.
On the other side of the spectrum, you is $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event, also known as the No-Limit Hold’em World Championship. This tournament starts with 60,000 in chips with blinds starting at 100-200 and rising every two hours. The 2024 edition of this event saw a record 10,112 people participate. The “first” day of the tournament is broken into four different days (1A, 1B, 1C, 1D). Day “two” takes another two days to complete. Days three through 11 are the standard definition of days. From the start of the 2024 WSOP Main Event on July 3rd until a champion was declared on July 17, the better part of 15 days had passed.
If you’re thinking of hopping in a tournament here at either of our two Lodge locations, you can use this as a guide to determine how long it will take you to be one of our next Poker Lodge champions!
