I’ve received a couple of e-mails regarding the formula that’s being used for the Chip Board Poker Tournament Leaderboard. I am using the formula used by Party Poker for their tournaments. It looks like this:

15 * (sqrt(sqrt(BI)) * (NP-6)/R)

where: BI is the tournament Buy-In, NP is the number of players in the tournament, and R is the Rank the player finished.

Using last night's tournament, here’s an example of how the formula works for the first-place finisher:

The square root 20 (the buy-in) is 4.472136, and the square root of that is 2.114743

The number of players (29) – 6 = 23

23 divided by 1 (the rank of the first-place finisher) is 23

15 times 23 times 2.114743 = 729.5862

For the second place finisher:

23 divided by 2 is 11.5

15 times 11.5 times 2.114743 = 364.7931

You’re basically calculating the first-place points as a function of the number of tournament entries (since the buy-in will remain $20 throughout the 12 rounds of the tournament). Divide that number by your rank, and there’s your points.