Poker Tournaments or Ring Games?

Posted by kNox on August 12th, 2010

When it comes to playing online poker, you have a lot of different choices to make. First off, you should consider which poker game you want to play. There are a lot of different variations of the same game, with the most famous ones being Texas Hold ?em, Omaha, 7 Card Stud, and many more. By playing online you have a huge advantage of having a lot to choose from. After you decide on which poker game to play, you have to take yet another thing into consideration: what type of poker is right for you?

And here you have two different choices. They might feel like the same thing, but they?re miles apart. You can either play ring games (otherwise named  cash games) or tournaments.

Ring games are a lot alike what you would play in a casino on a day to day basis. You decide how much money you want to play with (you only need to make it fit inside a limit; for instance, on $0.1/$0.2 limits the minimum amount you can bring to a table is $2, and the maximum amount is $4 , in most online poker rooms), you decide how much you want to play (or if you want to skip one or more hands), and you decide when you should get out of the table.

Tournaments are a lot different. Usually, players pay a specific amount of money to get in the tournament. Then, once all players are in, they start playing with chips, instead of real money. When a player runs out of chips, he is out of the tournament. Players keep getting eliminated until only one of them is left, and he wins the big pot. Usually, there are more places that can insure you get paid, but first place will always cash out the most money (most of the times the first place is worth 20% of the amount that was collected from the players).

There is also a difference when it comes to the way that online poker rooms (or casinos) collect their share of the money. In cash games, they keep a small percentage out of every bet that a player places. In tournaments, that sum is separated from the buy in (for instance, you will often see a $1 tournament as $1+$0.10. That means that $1 is the buy in, and the $0.10 is the rake, the sum that the casino will keep).

That being said, it?s up to you to choose which type of poker game you want to play. You might want to check them both out and see which fits you the best.