Poker Tournaments

A poker tournament can be single-table or multi-table; invitational or open. The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is the largest and most renowned poker tournament in the world. It is an open multi-table no-limit Texas Hold’em tournament. An open tournament means that anyone can play so long as he can provide the buy-in or entrance fee. In exchange for this entrance fee the competitor will receive a set amount of play-money in the form of poker chips. These poker chips are what will keep him in the game; when they are gone, so is he! Some tournaments allow the re-buy or buy-back of chips, these chips are known as add-ons. An open tournament means that it is open to all as opposed to invite only as an invitational game would be. The buy-in for an open tournament can be a lot of money, often times in to the thousands of dollars. The one alternative to paying is to win a smaller, cheaper satellite competition which offers a seat in a larger tournament as its prize.

A multi-table tournament will start off with 10s or even 100s of full tables. Gradually as players get knocked out the remaining players will make new tables. This will continue until there is only one table left. An alternative to this form is a Shoot-out tournament, in which a certain number of players from each table will ‘qualify’ to go into the next round, this however is not common. In a single-table tournament, otherwise known as a sit-and-go tournament, named as such because the game starts as soon as the table is full, the game is played as if at the final table of a multi-table tournament. This type of tournament, whilst very uncommon in physical poker tournaments, is very popular in online poker tournaments. The player left at the table with all the chips, is the winner. Poker is played to last man standing.

Texas Hold’em is the most commonly played poker tournament game, but others may include a form of stud poker, or another form of community card poker such as Omaha Hold’em. The betting format of tournaments can be one of three types; structured/fixed limit; semi structured/pot limit; or unstructured/no limit. Many argue that it is the form of betting that defines the tournament even more than the type of game being played!

The prize money is usually divided in one of two ways; fixed of proportional. Fixed means that the pot is divided between the top players, for example a game of 20 players with a $100 buy-in yields a pot of $2000 which may be divided $1000 to first place, $600 to second place, and $400 to third. Proportional means that the prizes are percentage based with a top-heavy biased. This means that more people win something, but the top three win less. For example, with the same pot of $2000, the winner may get $800, second place $400 and third place $300, fourth $150, fifth $125, sixth $100, seventh $75 and eight $50. Thereby 40% of the field, win something but the top prizes aren’t as high as with fixed prizes.