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Poker Tournaments
Tournaments are poker competitions involving up to 1500+ players playing at the same time. Because tournaments are fun to play in, have a low entry fee and a large prize pool they are a very popular and inexpensive way for novice poker players to gain experience at playing the game, as well as a proving ground for more experienced players eyeing the pot.
While there are many different types of poker played at casinos and online rooms, tournament play is usually reserved for Texas Hold'em, Omaha, and 7-card Stud, due to the larger followings the games have. Poker tournaments can have as few as 6 players (single table tournaments) to thousands of players for larger events. Large tournaments consist of many open tables, each table having 8 to 10 players. The tables are slowly removed from the tourney as players are eliminated, and players are balanced from table to table as needed. (These are known as multi-table tournaments).
Basic of Play
Players pay a buy-in fee (this is the core of the prize pool) and an entry fee (a fee charged by the house for hosting the tournament) in order to play. They are then assigned a seat and given tournament chips with witch to play. These chips have no cash value in relation to the buy-in, $1000 is a typical amount
for players to start with regardless of the buy-in amount.
The object of the tournament is to win all of the chips. All tournament players start out with the same quantity of chips to play with and all start playing at the same time. Players play until they lose all of their chips and are then removed from the table. The tournament continues non-stop, often for several hours, until only one person remains. As playing progresses the stakes rise (Blinds are doubled on a timed interval), making it more and more difficult for players with short stacks to remain in the game. Players are awarded prize money based on their finishing position in the tournament. The top finishers earn the most money with the 1st place winner usually receiving about 40% of the total prize money, the 2nd place winner about 20% and so on. The number of winners and the size of the payouts depend upon the game being played and the number of people playing.
Re-buys and Add-ons
In some tournaments players are given the option of buying more chips during the tournament:
A re-buy option allows players (at the start of the tournament) to purchase more chips if they run out. A player will receive the same number of chips that he/she started the tournament with. Some tournaments allow unlimited rebuys during the first hour of a tournament, allow only a single re-buy. The add-on option is similar, but is usually offered only once at the end of the re-buy period and can be used regardless of how many chips you have. As the name implies, these chips are added on to your stack. All proceeds from re-buys and add-ons are added to the prize pool (except for house fees, if applicable).
Betting
Tournament betting is structured and the limits increase with each level. These changes in levels of play occur differently depending on the tournament; some are timed while some increase the level after a set number of rounds are played.
Balancing and Collapsing Tables
Because larger tournaments have more than one table the number of players at each table will change as the tournament progresses and players are eliminated. For the game to be fair the number of players at each table should be the same so the organizers move players in an attempt to keep all the tables equally populated.
Balancing is the practice of moving players from full tables to less full tables when the difference is 3 or more players. Collapsing tables is the practice of removing tables once there are enough empty spaces among the rest of the tables to do so. Thus with 10 player tables when there are 10 empty spaces the players from one table are moved to empty spaces and that table is taken out of play. All Rights Reserved.
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