Poker Tournaments

Poker tournaments are competitions involving up to 1500+ players playing at the same time. The tournaments are a fun and inexpensive way for novice players to gain experience at playing the game against more experienced players. Tournaments are very popular as they are fun to play in, have a low entry fee and offer large prizes to be won.

Games Played
Poker games played at tournaments are usually limited to: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, 7-card Stud and 5-card Stud. Wile there are many other types of poker played at casinos tournaments limit the games played to those that have a large number of followers.

Number of Players
The number of players at a poker tournament can be as few as 8 players or as many as 1500+ players. The larger tournaments have many tables playing with each table having 8 to 10 players.

Balancing and Collapsing Tables
Because a larger tournament is composed of several tables the number of players at each table will change as players are eliminated during play. To keep the game fair each table should have the same number of players so in an attempt to keep the same numbers at all the tables the organizers will move players among the practice of moving players from full tables to less full tables when the difference is 3 or more players is called balancing.

The practice of removing tables once there are enough empty spaces among the rest of the tables is called collapsing tables. For example if are 10 empty spaces among the tables and each table holds 10 players the players from one table will be moved to fill these empty spaces and that table is taken out of play.

Basic Play
Once players pay their fees they are assigned a seat and given tournament chips (these are different from regular casino chips) with witch to play. Players pay two fees when entering a tournament: a buy-in fee (this is the core of the prize pool) and an entry fee (charged by the house to pay for hosting the tournament). 

The winner of the tournament is the one player who wins all of the chips. All the players start playing with the same number of chips and all players start playing poker at the same time. Play continues for a player until he/she loses all of their chips at which point they are out of the tournament. Tournament play continues, often lasting for many hours, until one person remains with all of the chips. As the tournament progresses the tournament level increases and the stakes rise making it more and more difficult for players to remain in the game. 

When the tournament is over the players are ranked by the length of time they managed to play. The prize money is awarded based on this player ranking. The top finishers earn the most money with the 1st place winner usually receiving about 40% of the prize money, the 2nd place winner about 20%, 3rd place 10% and so on. The total winners and the size of the prize is dependent on the game being played, the entry fee charged and the number of people who play.

Re-buys and Add-ons
Often players are allowed to buy more chips during the tournament:A re-buy option allows players to purchase more chips when they run out (this is limited to the first few levels of play). The re-buy option can be unlimited (allowing as many re-buys as a player wants) during the re-buy period of the tournament or may be limited to a single re-buy.

An add-on option also allows a player to purchase more chips but is more restricted usually being offered only once at the end of the re-buy period. Add-on options can usually be exercised regardless of how many chips the player has.

The proceeds from re-buys and add-ons are added to the prize pool for distribution later.

Betting
Tournament betting is structured betting and the betting limits increase with each level of tournament play (while tournaments differ the lower betting limit is around the $15 range while the upper betting limit is often in excess of $2,000). The levels of play are changed depending on the tournament rules some tournaments time the length of time a level lasts while some tournaments increase the level after a given number of rounds are tournament poker limits player losses to the buy-in fee and offers an outside chance for players to win large prizes. It is an exciting, inexpensive and fun way to play poker. Try a tournament to see what others see in this type of game.