I have four examples of break pots that I have seen.
A few weekly tournaments have break pots and they sell tickets for $1 each with a maximum of $20 per person. The rules are simple, break and make the nine ball or run the table, or make the a combination on the nine ball. One place holds 9 total draws. The first draw is for the total amount minus $50 so that the following week if hit it starts with at least $50 in the pot. The second ticket is for %75 of the pot, third is for %50, and fourth is for %40. If nobody wins one of the previous draws, then they do a maximum of 5 more draws to get a maximum of 3 winners of %25 percent of the pot. Its a lot of draws and the pot usually doesn't grow that high because someone usually wins one or two of the %25 drawings. Usually the pot stays around $200.
Another place has a break pot that the owner put a cap of $500 on it. It usually sells around $200 worth of tickets. They draw five times and the first ticket is for all the money $700, second for %80, third %60, and then the last two at %50. If no one hits it, then they do $20 draws until the pot is down to $500 again.
When I was in the Virginia area, their break and run pot was over $6000 and how they did it was $5 a ticket and it was 10 ball. It did not matter if you made the 10 ball on the break or not, if you did it was spotted and you get to keep shooting. they only drew three tickets and how it worked was whoever had the tickets had the choice of anyone in the tournament could shoot for them but the shooter could only shoot for one of the three people. This prevented the best person at the tournament getting three chances at the pot. Anyways, the player breaks the 10 ball rack and if he makes a ball he gets to keep shooting, for every ball after the break they get $200 a ball. If a player runs the entire rack he gets the maximum of $2000. The balls on the break do not make the player money, the only way they count is if the player runs out. I do believe that if you made a 1-10 combination you got to keep shooting to make more money but I am not sure about that.
The last example I have is in Fresno I saw a break pot that traveled from tournament to tournament, it was hit for $13000 two weeks before I got there and how it worked was. $1 a ticket and they drew three tickets that was for %100 of the pot. The kicker of it was, the only way to win was to make the 9 on the break. So one lucky person made 13K on one lucky break, skill level really doesn't play a big part in that kind of break pot.
Regardless of what or how you do a break pot, it will draw more players once it grows.
