These are competitions that gather thousands of poker players at the tables, and offer the winner an amount with 6-7 zeros. Unlike cash games, where each hand is a separate game, poker tournaments have completely different rules.
Poker Tournaments: Main Types
All contests in online poker can be divided as necessary to buy-in:
- Freerolls. It is poker training in which gamblers do not have to pay a fee, but they have a prize pool. Usually, a small amount or a ticket to a larger event is played out, but sometimes there are pleasant exceptions. Most of the participants in these games are newcomers who are not yet ready to risk their money;
- Guaranteed. The best poker contests offer a guaranteed prize pool. That is, even before the start of registration of players, it becomes known how much will be played at the tables;
- Satellites. These are tournaments with a low prize pool, in which the prize is a ticket to another poker contest. The structure of satellites includes several stages: to get to the tournament with real money prize players need to get best position in final table of qualifying games.
The prize pool of such tournaments can be different – it all depends on the amount of the contribution and the number of participants.
How to Become a Participant?
To become a participant, players must register and pay a buy-in. A buy-in is a mandatory contribution that gamblers must pay (exception, freerolls – free tournaments). If gamblers intend to play in a multi-table competition, then they can register in advance, even in a few days. Besides, they can join a poker tournament thanks to a ticket that is played in other games or issued for participation in various promotions.
Everyone has the same starting bankroll – at the beginning, players get a certain amount of chips. Those who lose all the chips leave the game. The aim is to collect more chips and knock opponents out of the table. The structure of the prize pool is usually determined in advance: the description of the tournament says how many places are the prize and how the prize pool will be distributed between them.
Online Poker Tournament Winning Strategy
An important component of the tournament strategy online poker is the precise determination of when it is possible to raise bets (and what kind of raise to do). Without this strategy, players can lose the chance and will not use the advantageous situation without timely raising – or, conversely, make a mistake by answering the opponent’s raise at a disadvantageous time. General rules of online tournament poker strategy:
- The base raise is four big blinds. If no one has raised the rate before, gamblers need to raise it by exactly four BB;
- For each player who calls the blind, another raise is added. For example, if two players call before, the size of the raise will be not 4, but 6 BB;
- If the opponent raised the bet, players need to raise three times;
- If several players have raised, the player needs to triple the last raise;
- If, as a result of a raise, gamblers need to give more than half of bankroll to a common bank (limit Omaha), they can go all-in.
Positions are determined clockwise from the dealer (or from the big blind). An early position is the riskiest and unprofitable, players in an early position are the first to make bets and cannot react according to the situation to the decisions of their opponents.
