I'm pretty sure that it was the National Pub Poker League (NPPL) that originally introduced Texas Hold'em tournaments to the New Zealand pub and club scene. The NPPL is an Australian organisation that bought poker tournaments here maybe 20 years ago and is still going strong. As a result, the NPPL rules and procedures are what most tournament players are used to in this country.
A few years ago, when I ran my first poker tournament I decided that I needed to have a written set of rules that I could refer to if necessary. I first went to the NPPL website to see what their rules were but I found them to be somewhat basic and not really what I was looking for. After a quick google search I soon discovered the Tournament Director's Association (TDA) rules, which were much more detailed and comprehensive. I thought the TDA rules were much better so I adopted them and have been using them ever since.
Well, to be more precise, I've been using most of the TDA rules. The thing is, there are a number of areas where the TDA and the NPPL do not agree, and the vast majority of players are so used to the NPPL way of doing things that they find it hard to change. In the two tournaments that I currently run (the weekly Turbo at the Landmark Bar and the monthly deep stack tourney at the Onehunga Workies) I've been working towards changing the rules, with varying degrees of success.
Changing the 'forced check rule' was simplest. The NPPL procedure when someone bets out of turn is that the offending player is then not allowed to bet and can only call or check. So this is effectively an instantly applied penalty. The TDA approach is less severe. There is no instant penalty and the player who bet out of turn has to go through with their declared bet, provided that the action hasn't changed. A penalty is only applied in the case of repeated offences by the same player. I've been able to introduce this rule in both the tournaments that I run with a minimum of fuss.
Another change that I've been able to introduce is the procedure for moving a player to another table. I now move the player in the 'under the gun' position to the other table and they get dealt in immediately, regardless of the position they come into, even if that means paying the big blind or being the dealer. The procedure that is used in other local tournaments is that the player behind the dealer moves and they go on to the new table in whatever position is available. If they come into the blinds the procedure is a bit confused. In most cases the moving player is required to sit out several hands until the button passes. This is actually the rule for cash games and is not really a fair way to do things in tournaments.
Breaking tables is another area that is a bit confused in local tournaments. There tends to be no set procedure and most of the time the tournament director moves the players by saying something like 'I need two at this table and three at that table', and players then make their own choice of table. Although the games that I run are not actually big enough for me to worry about this procedure at the moment, if I did have a three table game then I would use the TDA rule. This involves randomly assigning new positions to the players. This is pretty simple using a random card draw. That way, everything is not only fair, but is seen to be fair.
Part of the problem with moving players in most tournaments I attend is that organisers usually have only as many seats as are necessary at each table. I've found that it works out better if you have a full number of seats at each table, regardless of the number of seated players. That way, I have vacant seats that I can move players into with a minimum of disruption. Players are used to tidying seats away when they get knocked out, so I just have to be alert and make sure that the seats are moved back into place.
According to another NPPL rule, if three or more players get moved to a new table there is a re-draw for dealer position. According to the TDA rules, players just take on whatever responsibilities their new seat carries, regardless of the number of players that move. I'm still a bit ambiguous about which way I should go on this one. It seems to be an entrenched idea among local players that if three or more move you re-establish for dealer. But it seems kind of arbitrary to me. Either you should re-establish every time or not, rather than creating an artificial line at a certain number of players. On balance, I think I will be just keeping it simple and sticking with the TDA, if and when this issue comes up.
The trickiest area I've had to deal with is the chip-up. The standard local procedure is pretty simple: chips are always rounded up. So if changing up 100 chips to 500s, anyone with 4x100 chips gets a 500, and even a player with a single 100 chip also gets a 500. On the other hand the TDA rule is different and somewhat complicated. The chip-up involves a 'chip race'. This is where the left-over chips are pooled and changed up and the TD deals out cards to determine which player gets the extras.
I don't like either of these chip-up procedures. Using the NPPL method, some-one with one 100 chip gets 500, and some-one with 4x100 also gets 500. That's not very fair. On the other hand, the TDA system is worse; depending on the luck of the draw, some-one with one 100 chip could get a 500 while the player with 4x100 could get nothing. So I've gone with a compromise procedure. In my Wednesday night game I simply round up or down. So 100 or 200 gets nothing and 300 or 400 gets a 500 chip. It seems to me to be the simplest and fairest way to do things.
When I introduced this rounding up and down process to my Wednesday night tournament there were initially a few murmurings about losing chips but overall it went okay. People got used to it. However, I haven't yet introduced it to the monthly game I run at Onehunga. This is because the main game at Onehunga is the weekly Friday-nighter which is run by the poker organiser at that club, and he uses the NPPL rounding up system. So I am likely to meet up with more resistance if I try to change the colour-up procedure at my game.
Nevertheless, assuming I'm still getting enough players coming to my Onehunga game, I intend to change the chip-up procedure starting next year. I'm sure there will be some objections but in the end, it's my game and my goal is to run it in the fairest and most transparent way possible. Once I introduce that change I will have got rid of the worst anomalies created by the traditional NPPL procedures and be pretty much running according to the TDA rules (apart from the chip-up). It's not that the NPPL rules are all that bad, it's just that I need a proper written set of rules to fall back on if required, and the TDA rules provide that. My main aim when running tournaments has always been to ensure that they are run in a fair and consistent way and I think that the procedures I'm working on adopting will achieve that.
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