I played a NLHE tournament with a Starting Stack Size of 25000 and Level 1 Blinds of 50/100.
So that means we started with 250 big blinds each.
There were ~1000 entrants, so 25 million chips in play.
By Level 20 there were 100 players left, and the blinds were 5000/10000 with 1000 Ante per player (10 players per table, so 10000 in Antes).
So the average stack size at Level 20 was 250k, which was 25 big blinds, and the total pot size at the start of each hand was 25k (1/10 of the average stack).
Is it normal for the blinds and antes to dwarf the stacks so much?
What trend am I looking at? I can't imagine a tournament where the final table consists of players who have 1 big blind each, but why do stack sizes (when counted in BBs) seem to be getting smaller? Is it just the result of people gradually tightening up until the bubble, so does it rebound afterward? And is this typical for every tournament?
Is the relationship linear? a curve? Can someone show me a visualization of it?