When you play online poker you can choose between cash games (you just choose a table and start playing if there is a seat available) or tournaments. Many players prefer to play tournaments because they are exciting, competitive and some freerolls are totally free to play. At the poker rooms on our site you can find everyday many tournaments en the top poker rooms offer tournaments with thousands or million of guaranteed money.

The Buy-in

The buy-in is the amount you have to pay to start playing. All players pay the same amount which will be added to the prize pool. A buy-in amount exist of two parts. One part is for the prize pool and the other part is the fee you pay to the poker room. For example; a buy-in of €100 + €9 means that €100 goes to the prize pool and €9 will go to the pokerroom. The fee is mostly around 10% of the buy-in.

You can also have a tournament where you don't have to pay anything (freeroll) or you buy-in with a ticket, which you have won with a smaller tournament or been given as bonus by the poker room.

The procedure

In tournaments it's not possible to choose the position at the table. The computer will decide your place. Everybody get the same number of chips and you can only use them for the tournament, they don't have any value. You can't quit from the tournament and cash the chips.

Once all players are seated the tournament will start like a normal poker game. Once you have lost all the chips you are out of the tournament. The tournament continue until there is one player left with all the chips and he is the winner.

The limits

The limits (blinds and minimum bet) in a tournament are increased after a certain period. In no-limit you also have to pay antes, to get more money in the pot. The reason to increase the limits is very logical. If the limits stay the same a tournament with 100 or more playhers can take a very long time. Players can fold and just pay the blinds when it's their turn. But when the limits increase the player will loose his chips faster and the tournament will be more attractive and exciting.

The prizes

When players loose their chips and are out of the tournament the number of players automatically decreases. Players are moved to other tables during gameplay to end up with one table, which is called the final table. To win a tournament is not easy and the big money are mostly divided over the first 3 players. About 60% of the prize pool are received by the first 3 players.

In general 10% of the total number of players receive a prize, depending on the final position. Your minimum goal is to end up 'in the money' and to receive your buy-in back. But off-course you have to go for the number one position which give syou the most money.

The most exciting moment of a tournament is the 'money cut-off line' or 'the bubble'. This is the difference between winning a prize or spending a long time in the tournament and don't win anything at the end because you are in the bubble.

Re-buy tournament

The most tournament are Freezeout Tournament, which means once you loose your chips you are out of the tournament. But you can also play in a re-buy tournament. In the first levels you are allowed to buy new chips once the first stack is finished. It differences per tournament if you can do a re-buy if you have the same or a little bit less that the start chips stack. Players will take more risk in these periods of the tournament because they can buy new chiops when they lost it or people buy more chips to have a bigger stack once the re-buy period is finished.

You can also do an ' add-on' at the end of the re-buy period. You can buy more chips no mather how many chips you have. many times you get more points for the same amount as with a re-buy, so many players choose for an add-on.

Because of all the re-buys and add-ons the pirze pool will increase a lot. This means that you can win more money but on the other side your returnon investment is lower. If you do many re-buys you might have to end on the 3th-4th position to get your money back.

Tournament styles

The most known is the multi-table tournament, but there are also other tournaments and single-table tournaments. These are also called Sit & Go's and are small tournaments with 9 or 10 players. The top 3 players receive winnings from the prize pool. The Sit & Go's are very popular on internet.

Satellites: Satellites are qualification tournaments for higher buy-in tournaments. With a €80 satellite for a €1000 tournament, players can win 1 ticket for every €1000 in the prize pool. These are mostly re-buy tournaments so the poker room can give more tickets.

Double Shootout: Every table is a single tournament and the winner of each table goes to the final where the prizes are divided under the winners.

Heads-Up tournament: These are one-against-one tournaments. It's like the structure of tennis tournaments.

Strategy

Every sort of tournament has a different strategy. Next to the normal poker strategy there many more aspects you have to pay attention to with tournament play. A few of these aspects are:

- How many chips do I have to be able to pay the blinds
- When do the limits increase
- How much percentage of my stack do I need to pass one round without playing a hand
- How many players have to loose their stack so I will be in the prize money
- How many players have less chips than me
- How many chips does the player on the big blind has
- and many more aspects

If you want to learn real tournament strategy we advice you to buy books which are specialised in poker tournament strategy