Most casinos try their best to host a decent poker tournament that will hopefully be a pleasant and memorable experience for all the participants. Besides the enormous amount of work it takes to mold and launch a successful tournament, one of the biggest headaches is trying to keep the events at a reasonable length. Events that run too long tend to throw scheduling of help (just as an example) out of kilter. So, as it stands now, most tournament events are hastened along by having structures that include those big 100% blind and ante increases. As most of you know, later in an event this can be very devastating for a player. It is not uncommon to find that not one player left in the event (when down to a few tables) has enough chips to continue reasonable play. This is one of the main reasons deals have to be made at the final table and this should not be the norm. A player should be allowed to utilize his skills to gather chips and advance in an event with an opportunity to win it all. The way most tournament structures are, you must get lucky to win.

In an effort to help resolve this problem, we have come up with a system that calls for average blind and ante increases of less than 50%. As an example of how the system would basically work, suppose there were 1,000 players seated for an event that was scheduled to last only 6 hours. In this case, each level would have to be 15 minutes. If the same event and players were set for 23 hours, each level would have to be 60 minutes long. If you have 200 players with 15 minutes per level, the tournament would last about 4 3/4 hours. Those, of course, are somewhat extreme examples, but they do show the flexibility of this system. The idea is to shorten the levels just a little and set the average blind increases smaller than what has been standard in the past. Over the length of the event, the gradual increases will more than compensate for the shorter levels.

Having a system that will quickly provide a casino with carefully calculated time constraints that they need is invaluable. In addition, the system provides the players with a smooth transition for each level. The final product is a win-win situation.

Some of the betting amounts will be somewhat unfamiliar to you, but be patient, they are necessary to complete the gradual increases that are installed. We believe this will be the smoothest tournament structure that you have ever experienced and that it will prove to be a lot more fun. In order to identify this system, we have named it "Tex's TEARS". The TEARS part means, "Tournament Evaluation and Rating System".

If enough players would make it known to cardroom managers that this system should be the standard, casinos would think very seriously about adopting it. We believe this would dramatically improve tournaments and allow a player to walk into any tournament with the satisfaction of knowing exactly what to expect. So, please spread the word.