Since the hit the big time in the mid-2000s, poker players have been drawn to poker tournaments like bored housewives to reality TV. The invention of made poker tournaments even more accessible as you could play massive events with real-money prizes without waiting in lines or even leaving your own home. The biggest poker tournaments now exist online with regular tournaments that draw tens of thousands of players every week.

1. How To Win At Texas Holdem Tournam…
2. Poker Tournaments Colorado

Single table Sit & Go tournaments also exploded online and are available 24/7 every day of the year. Not all online poker sites are created equal when it comes to online tournaments, though, so if you’re a huge online tournament lover you’ll want to pick the best site to hone your craft. You’ll likely want to focus on at least three criteria: volume, variety and rewards.

If you play a ton of tournaments you’'ll want to want a huge player base so a tournament is always starting. Variety is also important if you like to play tournaments in games outside of standard No-Limit Hold’em freezeout events. Some sites give you plenty of options with bounty, shootout and even fast-fold tournaments.

Below is a our extensive list of poker site reviews based on being the best tournament poker sites online. Read the full review to find out more on their daily tournament offerings or click 'Play Now' to open a new account at each site and start playing within minutes. If freerolls are more your thing, check our list of. Ever since Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2003, interest in tournament poker has gone through the roof. Once a backroom game only played by professional gamblers in the corners of Las Vegas casinos, poker has exploded into mainstream culture. Poker has made its way into homes around the world as people watch major poker tournaments on their televisions and play at on their computers. The largest live poker tournament in history was in 2006 when the WSOP Main Event reached 8,773 players, sending eventual winner Jamie Gold home with a first-place prize of $12 million.

Winning a poker tournament of that size certainly takes a ton of luck, but that doesn't mean tournament poker isn't a skill game. The best players have an edge over the rest of the field and, over time, will win more than their less-skilled peers. But it's the element of luck that makes tournament poker so attractive. Anyone with a chip and a chair has the chance to beat the best in the world, and come home a millionaire. Below our editors have scoured the web to find the best online poker tournament sites. These top poker rooms offer a wide range of multi-table and sit-and-go tournaments. Many of them also offer and satellites regularly and if you read our reviews you will be able to find the majority of tournament sites in the industry. Below is a quick primer on what a poker tournament is and a guide to some of the most popular types of tournaments you’ll find online. You'll also find some quick strategy tips to help you on your way.

Read more:. What is a Poker Tournament?

Unlike a cash game which can run indefinitely, a poker tournament begins at a predetermined start time with each player buying a ticket to the event at a set price and starting at the same time with the same number of chips. Players play until they are eliminated by losing all of their chips. A set number of finishers (typically around 10% of the total starting field) get paid on a descending scale from the winner down to the last paid finishing spot. All players who finish below the lowest paid spot (for example in a 100-person tournament, all players finishing from 100th to 11th) leave the tournament with nothing but a story. Buy-ins for poker tournament can run from just pennies online up to $1 million - the most expensive tournament in the world right now! Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs) Multi-table tournaments are the standard in online poker. As with all tournaments, you pay a buy-in fee and you get a stack of chips. When those chips are gone you are out of the tournament (unless of course it's a rebuy tournament, in which case you can buy another stack of chips if you bust within a certain time period from the beginning).

MTTs, as you might assume, take place over multiple tables with a specified number of players per table and have a designated starting time. When players start to bust out from the tournament and the number of players at a table becomes uneven to the rest of the field, that table is 'broken' and players are randomly distributed to other tables with empty seats. It's hard to win MTTs but when you do it's usually a big score. Sit & Go's (SNGs) Sit & Go's were pioneered online and are still incredibly popular. A Sit & Go is usually only one or two tables and begins as soon as every seat is filled. Most poker sites have Sit & Go's starting every couple minutes or even seconds. Payouts typically go to the top three players, depending on the number of tables.

How To Win At Texas Holdem Tournam…

On some of the bigger, sit-and-gos start up so quickly it's almost difficult to select and open seat in time. Sit & Go's are an excellent format for new poker players as they get to experience tournament poker without having to compete with hundreds of other players. Shootout Tournaments Shootouts are a combination of MTTs and Sit & Go's.

The overall tournament will have a huge field, but you will only play at one table at a time until there is just one person left at each table. The winner of each table will move on to the next round and the action will repeat until there is a winner. The number of rounds depends on the field size but if you just keep winning each Sit & Go-style table, you’ll win the tournament.

Turbo Tournaments Online poker already moves faster than live poker, but if you really want to crank up the action you might want to try a turbo tournament. Turbo tournaments are just standard MTT or Sit & Go's where the blind levels increase quickly, making fast play and quick decisions a necessity. If you only have a limited amount of time than turbo tournaments are a fantastic way to get a ton of action in a short time span. Bounty Tournaments. Online tournaments have huge payouts too.

Bounty tournaments are simply MTTs where there is a prize for knocking out a player. Sometimes there are bounties placed on certain players, like celebrities and poker pros while in other tournaments you get a bounty every time you bust a player. There's a certain strategy to bounty tournaments and some players love them. Satellite Tournaments Satellite tournaments are just tournaments where the prize you're playing for is the buy-in to another bigger prize pool poker tournament. Chris Moneymaker won his $10,000 seat into the 2003 WSOP Main Event through a $40 satellite, for example. In some satellites you're not just qualifying for a poker tournament but an all-expenses paid vacation to an exotic location AND a poker tournament.

Weekly Guaranteed Tournaments Almost every has a massive weekly poker tournament with a huge guaranteed prize pool. These tournaments are incredibly popular because players know they are getting a huge prize pool. Perhaps the most famous is the PokerStars Sunday Million, which originally offered a guaranteed prize pool of over $1 million but is now considerably bigger because of the amount of players willing to put up the $200 buy-in. If you’re willing to pay a fairly large buy-in, you could potentially win hundreds of thousands in these events. Differences Between Poker Tournaments and Cash Games Aside from being able to re-buy and cash-out whenever you like, tournament play sees the blinds increase on a predetermined schedule. This is very different from the static blinds of a cash game which will allow players to dictate their own pace of play. Another major difference between cash games and tournaments are the stack sizes. The stack sizes in a cash game are typically closer to each other than in a tournament, where some players will have many times that of the average stack while others may just hold a single chip. A successful tournament player needs to understand how to play with all stack sizes, while a cash-game player can choose to only ever sit behind a stack of a specific amount.

Poker Tournaments Colorado

Tournament Stack Sizes How you play in a tournament will mostly depend on two variables: the stage of the tournament and the size of your stack. The size of your stack is measured in two ways:. Your stack in comparison to the average stack size. Your stack in relation to the blinds.

The more chips you have, the more risk you're able to shoulder. In other words, you can make plays which risk 5,000 chips if you have 50,000, but the same play would be foolish if you only hold 6,000. The most important thing to understand in a tournament is your chips are your tournament life. Chips = Life When you run out of chips, your tournament is over; everything you do in a tournament should be based on this one concept. Stages of a Poker Tournament There are three basic tournament stages:. Early. Middle. Late Early Stage Since everyone gets to play the early stages of almost every tournament, this is the part in which all players have the most experience, feel the most comfortable and have a lot of chips in relation to the blinds.

Everyone's on an equal footing and it's hard to find anyone looking to gamble. People in this stage are rarely looking to get it all in with anything but the nuts. If you find a player willing to play a large pot, they either have the nuts, they're looking to gamble or they're trying to build a big stack early through sheer aggression.  Microsoft office 2009 free download for mac. More often than not, though, they have the goods. The standard approach to playing in this stage is to play very ABC tight-aggressive poker. It makes no sense to make big moves to steal the blinds, since the blinds are worth relatively nothing compared to the size of your stack. The idea is to make it through the early stage with average or above chips, giving you room to maneuver as you enter the middle stage.

Middle Stage The middle stage will range from being deep-stacked at the start (lots of chips compared to blinds) to short-stacked near the end. In this stage chips are quickly becoming more valuable and each round of blinds potentially brings you one step closer to elimination. It's at this point you can no longer afford to sit around waiting for only the best hands. You need to steal blinds and protect your chips to keep yourself from getting short. Once you get too short your only move left is all in. As, it's always better to take a risk to keep yourself sitting with a healthy stack than to wait until you've been whittled down and forced to take a risk just to stay alive.

If you take the risk to stay healthy and lose, you still have a handful of chips to try again with. If you wait until you're in dire straits you have no second chance. The goal with the middle stage is simply to stay alive and get yourself into the money (a tournament pro, though, likely cares little about making the money and plays to win at all times). Once you're into the money, you've entered the late stages of the tourney. Late Stage The late stage will have many players with very few chips and a few players with a lot of them. This is the time of a tournament when everyone's willing to gamble. Once you're in the money, people no longer care about going bust and are aiming for the win at all times. You need to play very aggressively, make few or no mistakes, and get lucky at the right times to have a shot at the title.

Luck is always a part of poker, and in tournaments it becomes a large factor of the game in the later stages. With the blinds being very large, and many stacks being very short, most players will be playing a simple all-in or fold game. You need to be willing to take coin flips, and have the luck to win them if you want to finish in first. How to Become a Better Tournament Player First, book, forum thread and webpage you can find.

Watch poker on TV, listen to webcasts and watch strategy videos. But above all else, you're going to have to play as much poker as you can. The more tournaments you play, the better you will become at playing them. Many of the best tournament players in the world play hundreds to thousands of tournaments each year. Read, play, reflect and discuss! Further Reading:. How to Win Satellites to Play Live Poker Tournaments.

By Bryan 'PrimordialAA' Pellegrino are an interesting breed of poker not only because of how they play but because they are spread out all over the world and therefore offer many unique experiences. Players who enter these tournaments get to play for stakes and in fields much bigger than they might be used to, and they also get to explore new cities and countries. Many players thus find poker tournaments to be awesome vacations, especially if they can find relatively cheap ways to enter. If you’re thinking about doing some tournament travel I’d first recommend looking carefully for a location that you want to visit and have the time for.

I recommend Europe from March through the fall: some of my favorite tournament spots are Barcelona, Budapest, Vienna, and Deauville. During the winter, there are attractive tournaments at the PCA in the Bahamas, the Aussie Millions in Melbourne, and the LAPT in various Latin American cities. Make sure you see some sights! More specifically, these tournaments are much better to play than the $700 weekly satellites online which are full of tough players. Once you win or buy the seat you have to plan for the trip itself. I would strongly recommend that you arrive at least two days early; three is even better.

This will allow you to adjust to jet lag and to get comfortable in the new city. You will also want to get into a routine that fits the new time zone because the 12-hour days you will (hopefully) be playing will be unforgiving if you’ve not adjusted to the local time. Set Aside Extra Time for Sight-Seeing You’ll also want to set aside time before or after the tournament to see the new place. Many people make a point of seeing every notable building and museum but I prefer not to get caught up in worries about seeing them all. Such a project is fine for some people but more often it makes what should be a fun and enriching experience into a chore and a blur.

I prefer to relax and experience a new culture: for example, there is often unfamiliar and delicious food available. It’s worth setting aside extra time and planning ahead to avoid familiar food and tourist traps—you can always grab a burger or some street kebab if you don’t like what you try but a good meal can be a highlight of the trip. When you’re going out at night don’t be shy about asking for recommendations; people are happy to give you ideas. Asking locals often leads to a much better time in a new city than you would have if you went to a club full of tourists—even if the tourist club is a good time, it figures to be nothing you can’t get at home. Be sure, however, to be aware of what’s around you and to stay safe. No big city has only safe districts and you can get into trouble even if you’re in a basically safe location. So when you’re going out, be smart and bring friends. Further Reading:.

A home poker tournament in progress. A poker tournament is a where players compete by playing.

It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table (called a ' tournament), and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of tables. The winner of the tournament is usually the person who wins every poker chip in the game and the others are awarded places based on the time of their elimination. To facilitate this, in most tournaments, rise over the duration of the tournament. Unlike in a (or cash game), a player's chips in a tournament cannot be cashed out for money and serve only to determine the player's placing. Contents. Buy-ins and prizes To enter a typical tournament, a player pays a fixed buy-in and at the start of play is given a certain quantity of tournament. Commercial venues may also charge a separate fee, or withhold a small portion of the buy-in, as the cost of running the event.

Tournament chips have only notional value; they have no cash value, and only the tournament chips, not cash, may be used during play. Typically, the amount of each entrant's starting tournament chips is an multiple of the buy-in. Some tournaments offer the option of a re-buy or buy-back; this gives players the option of purchasing more chips. In some cases, re-buys are conditional (for example, offered only to players low on or out of chips) but in others they are available to all players (called add-ons). When a player has no chips remaining (and has exhausted or declined all re-buy options, if any are available) he or she is from the tournament. In most tournaments, the number of players at each table is kept even by moving players, either by switching one player or (as the field shrinks) taking an entire table out of play and distributing its players amongst the remaining tables.

A few tournaments, called shoot-outs, do not do this; instead, the last player (sometimes the last two or more players) at a table moves on to a second or third round, akin to a found in other games. The prizes for winning are usually derived from the buy-ins, though outside funds may be entered as well. For example, some invitational tournaments do not have buy-ins and fund their prize pools with revenue and/or gate receipts from spectators.

Tournaments without a buy-in are referred to as. A freeroll tournament is free to enter and usually the player is given one chance in the tournament. A variation on a freeroll tournament is called a 'freebuy'. In a freebuy event, a player can enter with a free entry, but if the player loses their chips during the registration period they are able to buy themselves back into the event.

Play continues, in most tournaments, until all but one player is eliminated, though in some tournament situations, especially informal ones, players have the option of ending by consensus. Players are ranked in reverse chronological order — the last person in the game earns 1st place, the second-to-last earns 2nd, and so on. This ranking of players by elimination is unique amongst games, and also precludes the possibility of a tie for first place, since one player alone must have all the chips to end the tournament. (Ties are possible for all other places, though they are rare since the sole tiebreaker is the number of chips one has at the start of the hand in which one is eliminated, and hence two people would need to start a hand with exactly the same number of chips and both be eliminated on that same hand in order to tie with each other.) Sometimes tournaments end by mutual consensus of the remaining players. For example, in a ten-person, $5 game, there may be two players remaining with $29 and $21, respectively, worth of chips. Rather than risk losing their winnings, as one of them would if the game were continued, these two players may be allowed to split the prize proportional to their in-game currency (or however they agree).

Certain tournaments, known as bounty tournaments, place a bounty on some or all of the players. If a player knocks an opponent out, the player earns the opponent's bounty. Individual bounties or total bounties collected by the end of a tournament may be used to award prizes.

Bounties usually work in combination with a regular prize pool, where a small portion of each player's buy-in goes towards his or her bounty. Other tournaments allow players to exchange some or all of their chips in the middle of a tournament for prize money, giving the chips cash value.

Separate portions of each player's buy-in go towards a prize pool and a 'cash out' pool. The cash out rate is typically fixed, and a time when players may not cash out (such as the final table) is usually established. The remaining cash out pool is either paid out to the remaining field or added to the regular prize pool. Prizes are awarded to the winning players in one of two ways:. Fixed: Each placing corresponds to a certain payoff. For example, a ten-person, $20 buy-in tournament might award $100 to the first-place player, $60 for second-place, $40 for third, and nothing for lower places.

Proportional: Payouts are determined according to a percentage-based scale. The percentages are determined based upon the number of participants and will increase payout positions as participation increases. As a rule, roughly one player in ten will 'cash', or make a high enough place to earn money. These scales are very top-heavy, with the top three players usually winning more than the rest of the paid players combined.

Tournaments can be open or invitational. The, whose Main Event (a $10,000 buy-in tournament) is considered the most prestigious of all poker tournaments, is open. Multi-table tournaments involve many players playing simultaneously at dozens or even hundreds of tables. Satellite tournaments to high-profile, expensive poker tournaments are the means of entering a major event without posting a significant sum of cash. These have significantly smaller buy-ins, usually on the order of one-tenth to one-fiftieth the main tournament's buy-in, and can be held at various venues and, more recently, on the. Top players in this event, in lieu of a cash prize, are awarded seats to the main tourney, with the number of places dependent on participation., who won the Main Event, was able to afford his seat by winning an Internet tournament with a $39 buy-in., 2004 World Series of Poker champion, acquired his seat via a $165 Internet tournament. The opposite of a multi-table tournament is a single-table tournament, often abbreviated STT.

A number of places (typically, two, six or nine) are allocated at a single table, and as soon as the required number of players has appeared, chips are distributed and the game starts. This method of starting single-table tournaments has caused them to be referred to as sit-and-go ( SNG) tournaments, because when the required number of players 'sit', the tournament 'goes.' Sit-and-go tournaments of more than one table are becoming more common, however, especially in Internet poker. A single-table tournament effectively behaves the same as the of a multi-table tournament, except that the players all begin with the same number of chips, and the betting usually starts much lower.

Almost invariably, fixed payoffs are used. A tournament series may consist of either single-table or multi-table tournaments. In a tournament series, multiple tournaments are played in which prizes are awarded. However, a series leaderboard or standings system is often used and additional prizes, drawn from the individual tournament buy-ins, are awarded to those who perform best overall in the series. Major poker tournaments such as the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker, use standings to determine a player of the year. Playing format The most common playing format for poker tournaments is the 'freezeout' format. All players still playing in a tournament constitute a dynamic pool.

Whenever a player loses all his chips and gets eliminated, his table shrinks. To combat the constant shrinking of tables and avoid having tables play with varying numbers of players, players are moved between tables, with unnecessary tables getting closed as the tournament progresses. In the end, all remaining players are seated on just one table, known as the 'final table'. Most tournaments are freezeouts. In some tournaments, known as “rebuy tournaments”, players have the ability to re-buy into the game in case they lost all their chips and avoid elimination for a specific period of time (usually ranging from one to two hours). After this so-called “rebuy period”, the play resumes as in a standard freezeout tournament and eliminated players do not have the option of returning to the game any more.

Rebuy tournaments often allow players to rebuy even if they have not lost all their chips, in which case the rebuy amount is simply added to their stack. A player is not allowed to rebuy in-game if he has too many chips (usually the amount of the starting stack or half of it). At the end of the rebuy period remaining players are typically given the option to purchase an “add-on”, an additional amount of chips, which is usually similar to the starting stack. Another playing format is the 'shootout' tournament. A shootout tournament divides play in rounds. In a standard shootout tournament, 2-10 players sit on each table and the table roster remains the same until everyone but one player is eliminated.

The table winners progress to the final table where the tournament winner is determined. In a shootout tournament players are usually awarded places in tiers based on how many rounds they lasted and in which place they were eliminated. Shootouts can include multiple rounds (triple, quadruple or quintuple shootout) or feature several players from each table progressing (usually up to three). Shootouts are also a common format for large multi-table tournaments, although these may feature or instead of the standard. A recent innovation is the 'mix-max' or 'mixed max' tournament, in which the table sizes vary during the course of the event. A typical example is the mix-max event held at the, in which the first day of play was nine-handed, the second day six-handed, and the rest of the tournament heads-up. This effectively made it a hybrid freezeout–shootout tournament, with freezeout play at larger tables and shootout play in the heads-up phase.

Betting format Betting in tournaments can take one of three forms:. In a structured betting system, bets and raises are restricted to specific amounts, though these amounts typically increase throughout the tournament. For example, for a tournament with the stakes at 10/20, raises would be $10 in the first three rounds of betting, and $20 in the latter rounds.

Semi-structured betting provides ranges for allowed raises. Usually, in this format, one may not raise less than a previous player has raised.

For example, if one player raises $20, it would be illegal for another player to raise an additional $5. Is a semi-structured format in which raises cannot exceed the current size of the pot. Is a semi-structured format in which bets (and subsequent raises) must be between a minimum and maximum amount. Unstructured betting, usually called. While blinds, antes, or bring-ins are fixed, players are free to bet as much as they wish, even early in a round of betting. To bet all of one's chips (risking one's tournament life, in the event of losing the hand) is to go all-in. In no-limit tournaments, players will sometimes take this risk even early in the betting; for example, in some no-limit Texas Hold 'Em tournaments, it is not uncommon for players to bet 'all-in' before the flop.

The betting structure is one of the most defining elements of the game; even if other aspects are equivalent, a fixed-limit version and its no-limit counterpart are considered to be very different games, because the strategies and play styles are very different. For instance, it is much easier to bluff in a no-limit game, which allows aggressive betting, than in a fixed-limit game. No-limit games also vary widely according to the proclivities of the players; an informal, betting structure is developed by the players' personal strategies and personalities. The stakes of each round, as well as, and antes as appropriate per game, typically escalate according either to the time elapsed or the number of hands played. Variants of poker While some tournaments offer a mix of games, like events which combine Hold'em, Omaha, Stud and Stud Eight or Better and events, at which one may choose from a similar menu of games, most tournaments feature one form of or, such as, seven card stud,. Both Omaha and Texas Hold'em tournaments are commonly offered in fixed-limit and, and Texas hold 'em tournaments are very common (no-limit Omaha is almost nonexistent in tournament play). Tournament venues Informal tournaments can be organized by a group of friends; for example, most colleges feature poker tournaments.

And online gaming sites often offer daily tournaments. However, these are not the only venues. Poker cruises offer tournaments at sea. Most 2005 and 2006 World Series of Poker events took place in the convention center at the Rio Hotel in. Major tournaments The largest and most well-known tournament in the USA is the, held in Las Vegas. The World Series has traditionally been featured on.

In the 1980s the was the second largest and most prestigious tournament. The 2005 World Series of Poker was the first held outside of Binion's Horseshoe Casino, though the final few days of the main event were held in the legendary Benny's Bullpen. Later tournaments have been held at one of the and later properties; since 2005, the Rio has served as the venue. The largest and most well-known tournament in Europe is the, which was founded in 2004 by John Duthie and is now the largest poker tour in the world by both total players and prize pool. The began in 2007 in London, moved in to, and moved again in 2013 to the Paris region. The largest and most well-known tournament in Asia is the Macau event. The largest and most well-known tournament in Latin America is the Argentina event.

The, also known as the Aussie Millions, is the largest tournament in the Pacific region. WSOP owner Caesars Entertainment and Aussie Millions host teamed up to launch the World Series of Poker Asia-Pacific, which held its first edition in 2013.

In addition to these events, there are other major tournaments throughout the year. The World Poker Tour is held at different venues worldwide and broadcasts a series of open tournaments throughout the U.S. And Caribbean with buy-ins from $5,000 to $25,000, as well as European events with a €10,000 buy-in.

Some of these events are stand alone tournaments like the, but most are held in conjunction with a tournament series being held at the host casino, like the 's LA Poker Classic, the 's World Poker Challenge and the 's Legends of Poker. A was launched in 2010. Hosts at the casino, which has been broadcast by ESPN in recent years. The main live poker tournament in Africa is the All Africa Poker Tournament hosted by the Piggs Peak Casino in Piggs Peak, Swaziland. The is 64 players compete in heads-up matches single elimination style to determine a winner. It is one of the most prestigious heads up poker tournaments and it is the first tournament produced by a television network. The internet poker revolution has sparked online poker tournaments and series that have become larger than many live tournaments.

The (WCOOP) and the (FTOPS) are two of the biggest online poker tournament series, with tournament prizes surpassing the million-dollar mark. See also. References.