Tex's Tears

Tex's TEARS is a tournament format used by many casinos during major events which included the 2001 World Series of Poker. Tex Morgan, the inventor of Texas TEARS, has submitted the article below explaining Tex's TEARS in fuller detail. Feel free to post any comments about Tex's TEARS in our Poker Forum.

Tex's TEARS
Tex's TEARS 50% Structures
Our goals for this system are, if a casino advertises "Tex's TEARS 50% Structures", that a player could travel to that casino and know how many starting chips he would receive and what the structures would be in every event. Now he can make a decision on whether or not he wishes to attend and participate in that series of events. I have paid for airfare and traveled a long distance to get to a tournament that I thought would be a good tournament, only to find that the structure increases were too large (100%), the amount of starting chips was inadequate, or something else made the events terrible. When players pay their money for airfare, hotels, meals, and buy-ins, I think that the players have the right to know what to expect in major tournaments, and we are trying to give that to them.

The criteria for starting chips: Using Tex's TEARS, if the buy-in is $100 or larger and there is no rebuy, the player will never receive fewer than 1000 starting chips. In rebuy tournaments, the player will never receive fewer than 500 starting chips. Rebuy chips will always be either the same number as the starting chips or twice the number of the starting chips. (The casino chooses which.) If the buy-in is larger than $1000 the player will receive starting chips that equal the buy-in amount, dollar for dollar. In smaller tournaments (such as monthly, weekly, or daily events), with buy-ins of less than $100, the casino will choose the number of starting chips.

The criteria for blind and ante increases per level: A maximum increase of 67% and a minimum increase of 33% (except where chip denomination dictates otherwise). The average increase per level is to be just less than 50%.

We have made a few small changes in our structures to accommodate chip removal from the table, etc. However our main goals are intact and will remain so.

The casino always controls how many hours of playing time there will be in each event. I, personally, do not like to play in any major event with less than eight hours of playing time. However the five-hour events that I have played under my system have been quite comfortable to play in.

The players that have played using Tex's TEARS have approved of it by an overwhelming majority.

I wish to thank the following people, who have served on our advisory staff, Phil Hellmuth Jr., Dr. Max Stearn, Brad Daugherty, Ken Buntjer, TJ Harvey, and Reggie Coalwell