Home game time limits

I play in about 2 home games per week, we do a tournament stye with everyone putting a certain amout of money and in return getting a certain amount of chips. The normal evening is $1800-$2000 in chips, blinds starting at $5 and $10, and the blinds increase every 30 minutes. The problem is that because no one can play until 1am, we set a ending time to our tournaments....the person with the most chips at the end of the night wins. When it turns out that there are more than 2 people left with about 15 minutes to go, it becomes a crazy crap shoot, with the small stacks desperately going all in trying to make it in to 1st or 2nd place, this ends up really throwing things off and usually making the last couple of hands nothing but luck deciding a winner. Does anyone have a better way of playing tournament style with a time limit?
Thanks!

First of all you should set up your blind schedule in a way that you have a reasonable chance of playing your tournament to a finish. So, if you have not been able to finish the tournament with 30 minute blind intervals, then try 20 minutes. Or start out with less chips for each player.

Secondly, instead of letting the chip leader take all the money you divide the prize money over the top-3. For instance 50%-30%-20%. Announce this before you start the tourney. If you have three people left, and one of them is a huge chip leader, then the other two are playing each as well as trying to just challenge the chip leader.

Finally, allow the final players to negotiate a deal on how to split up the prize money. As long as none of the players left in the game is excluded from this deal there is no problem with ending a tourney this way.

First of all you should set up your blind schedule in a way that you have a reasonable chance of playing your tournament to a finish. So, if you have not been able to finish the tournament with 30 minute blind intervals, then try 20 minutes. Or start out with less chips for each player.

Secondly, instead of letting the chip leader take all the money you divide the prize money over the top-3. For instance 50%-30%-20%. Announce this before you start the tourney. If you have three people left, and one of them is a huge chip leader, then the other two are playing each as well as trying to just challenge the chip leader.

Finally, allow the final players to negotiate a deal on how to split up the prize money. As long as none of the players left in the game is excluded from this deal there is no problem with ending a tourney this way.

[5thStreetPokerParties.com]

We run into this issue all the time with clients who only have an alotted time frame for their events. In order to get things done in time we adjust a few different variables:

1. Starting Chips - Instead of starting with 2000 in chips, start with 1000 or 500.

2. Blind Level Duration - Use 20 min instead of 30 min.

3. Blind Schedule - Start at a higher blind level. Instead of 5-10, start at 25-50. Pull out only the initial blind levels. One of the worst things you can do is pull out levels in the middle of a standardized blind schedule... it disrupts the flow. Another possibility is to include antes in the later blind levels.

I personally hate event formats that have finite time limits on the end of the tournament. This only encourages reckless play in the last hand which penalizes the skilled player.