The Exciting World Of Poker Tournaments

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010

There are many times of poker tournaments, but the most popular and typical tournament type is the freezeout, meaning that once someone lost all chips he is eliminated. This tournament?s structure is quite simple: you place the buy-in, you start with the same amount as others, then the blinds begin to increase slowly and players get eliminated as they lose all their chips. The prices are given to the top winners, that means to less than 10% of the players in happy cases (sometimes it doesn?t even mean 1%).

But aside this type of tournaments you can also find tournaments that allow further re-buys or add-ons. In these tournaments if you lose all your chips then you can re-buy, paying the same amount you paid initially and receiving the same amount of chips as you did first. Usually the re-buy can be made for a certain period of time after the tournament began. After this period has passed, you cannot re-buy, so if you lose all your chips you will be eliminated. But you can pay to add a certain amount of chips to your stack whenever you feel it is necessary.

There also are the turbo tournaments that basically increase the blinds every five or even two minutes. If you are entering a turbo tournament you have to take into consideration the fact that luck is the most crucial factor here. These tournaments happen fast because all the action is located on the pre flop, player going all-in most of the times.

The satellite tournaments mean that they are not offering cash prices but a "ticket" of entrance to a bigger tournament, like the WSOP. The prices offered are usually relative to the number of people that get into the tournament. But the percent is low, so these tournaments require an aggressive approach.

The steps tournaments mean that you are taking part in more than one tournament. There are a series of satellite tournaments that allow player to gradually qualify for the following step and into the final step the cash prices, collected from all the buy-ins are offered to the best few. The first prize will get the biggest share of the money amount gathered, and then place from 2 to 5 usually receive the rest, a decent prize.

The shootouts are tournaments in which you have to play may single table tournaments one after the other. They are similar to steps tournaments. Players either advance after a table has been finish or are eliminated. The prize will be divided within almost every player at the final table, so the prizes are more but lower than in steps tournaments.

And finally there are the winner takes all tournaments. This are single table usually, and they require an aggressive strategy, as you have to be the first or you lose all anyway. The best example are home games that are usually played this way, mostly to avoid problems. People put an amount in first, and then, after one remains, he will take home all the buy-ins.