Tournament Information for Real Online Poker
Poker tournaments are poker games where poker players all start playing at the same time and continue playing until only a single player is left. Pokers tournaments are popular among poker players as they are fun to play in, have low entry fees and offer the chance of winning a part of a large prize pool. They also offer an inexpensive method for novice players to learn how to play, as well as a place where more experienced players can challenge better players to improve their game.
While many types of poker games are played at casinos and online poker rooms, tournaments usually limit themselves to Texas Hold'em, Omaha, and 7-card Stud poker games. These games are played as they have a huge following among poker players.
Poker tournaments can be small single table affairs with as few as 6 players or huge multi-table events involving thousands of players. These large tournaments start out with many tables each with 8 to 10 players. As players are eliminated the remaining players are moved from table to table to "balance the tables" when a table has no players left that table is removed from the tournament until at the end there is only a single table left. The players at this table play until one of them wins the tournament.
Tournament Basics
The goal in tournament games is to be the player who wins all of the chips. All tournament players start out equally. They are all issued the same value of tournament chips with which to play and they all start to play at one time. A player continues to play until all of their chips are lost at which time they are out of the tournament. Tournament play continues non-stop, usually for hours, until one player is left with all of the tournament chips. To speed up the game and make it more interesting the stakes rise at set intervals (the blinds are usually doubled at each timed interval). The increase in stakes makes it harder for players with smaller chip stacks to remain in the game forcing them to gamble or risk being eliminated because they are unable to pay the blinds.
To play tournament poker usually only requires a player to pay two fees to the poker host. One fee is an entry fee. The entry fee is kept by the poker host to cover the cost of running the tournament. The entry fee allows the player to play by assigning them a seat and issuing them a fixed amount of tournament chips (these are special chips they are not regular house chips). The other fee is the buy-in fee. The buy-in fee is not kept by the host but is simply collected to be paid out as prizes. The awarding of prizes differs with each tournament but the norm is for it all to go to the 8 to 10 players who make it to the final table.
The prize money is paid depending on the players finishing position in the tournament. The higher your finishing position the more prize money you earn, 1st place winners usually earn around 30% of the prize pool, 2nd place winners around 20% down to 10th place winners who get around 1%. The number of winners is determined by the tournament rules while the size of the prize pool is determined by the number of players and the size of the buy-in fee.
Re-buys and Add-ons
Poker tournaments may allow the players the option of re-buying tournament chips. A re-buy option can be used by players at the start of the tournament if they lose all of their chips. A player can only re-buy the same quantity of chips that he/she started the tournament with. There are two types of re-buy options. In some tournaments unlimited re-buys are allowed during the first hour of play, other poker tournaments limit re-buys allowing only one.
Another option similar to the re-buy option is the add-on option. The add-on option is usually offered once at the end of the re-buy period and is not dependent on a player having no chips. The newly purchased chips are then added to a players existing stack of chips, hence the name add-on.
Net proceeds from all re-buys and add-ons are added on to the prize pool.
Betting
Betting in a poker tournament is done according to the tournaments rules. Betting limits are increased on a regular basis. These betting increases occur differently in different tournaments; some tournaments increase the limits every so many minutes, other tournaments increase the limits after a given number of rounds have been played.
Balancing and Collapsing Tables
To accommodate the players large tournaments use several tables with each table having 8 to 10 players. As the tournament goes on players loose all of their chips and are removed from the game. The removal of these players presents the tournament organizers with a problem. The problem is that for the tournament to be fair the number of players at each table should be the same and because some players have been eliminated the number of players at each table differs. In an attempt to keep all of the tables evenly populated the tournament organizers will move some players to different tables. This is called balancing the tables.
Balancing the tables is the practice of moving players among tables. When there is a difference of more than three players between tournament tables the organizers will move players to tables with less players from tables that are full of players.
Collapsing tables is done when there is the equivalent number of empty spaces for a full table in the tournament hall. Thus when the hall is full of 10 player tables, and there are 10 empty spaces, all of the players from one full table are moved to fill the 10 empty spaces and that table is removed from the tournament.
