Poker Tournaments – Beginner’s Guide

Poker tournament is a tournament where players compete for the first place. It can consist of two players playing on a single tables or a thousand of players playing on hundreds of tables. The person who wins every poker chip in the game is announced the winner. The other players are awarded places according to the time of elimination. To enable this, in most of the tournaments, blinds rise over the set time of the tournament. This is not the case in cash games, player’s chips in a tournament cannot be cashed out for money and only serves in the determination of player’s place.

Buy-ins and Prizes

For a player to join a typical poker tournament they are required to pay a fixed buy-in. At the start of a game they are given a quantity of special poker chips. A separate fee is charged by commercial venues to cater for costs of running the event or withhold a portion of the buy-ins for the same. Tournament chips have nominal value, this is to mean that they have no cash value and only the chips can be used during play. Cash cannot be used during the game as chips. 

The amount of each players’ starting tournament chips is a figure multiple of the buy-in. An option of re-buy or buy-back is available in some tournaments where players are allowed to purchase more chips. In some cases, re-buys are conditional in that, they are only available to players with low or out of chips, while in other games they are open to all players, such are called add-ons. When a player has no chips at all and has exhausted or declined all re-buy options, if any available, they are eliminated from the tournament.

Players are kept even in all tables in most of the tournaments. This is achieved by moving players by switching a single player or by taking an entire table out of game and distributing the members to other tables. This does not happen in tournaments called shoot-outs, instead the last two or more players on a table moves to a second or third round similar to a single elimination tournament found in other games.

Prizes for winners are got from buy-ins and outside funds are entered as well. Like for example, some invitational tournaments do not have buy-ins hence fund their prize pools via sponsorships or gate receipts from spectators. Such tournaments are known as free tolls. The play goes on until all players are eliminated except one, although in some situations, players have the option of ending the game by consensus.

Players are ranked in reverse chronological order, the last person is ranked first, the second to last ranked second and so on. This ranking is unique in many games and prevents the possibility of a tie since only one player must have all the chips to end the tournament. Some tournaments end by a mutual consensus of the players. For instance, in a 5 dollar game with ten persons, there may be two players remaining with 29 and 21 dollars respectively chips. Instead of losing their game as it would happen if the game continues, players can be allowed to split the prize proportional to their in-game currency or otherwise agree.

Other tournaments called bounty tournaments, place a bounty on some or all players. If a player knocks out an opponent they earn the opponents bounty. Individual bounties and total bounties collected can be used to award prizes. In other tournaments, players are allowed to exchange some or all their chips in the middle of a tournament for prize money, giving the chips cash value. Portions of each players buy-ins are directed to a prize pool and cash out pool. The cash out rate is fixed and a time when players may not cash out is also fixed.

Wining players are awarded prices in two ways, fixed and proportional. In fixed, each place relates to a certain payoff. For example, in a ten people tournament, $20 buy-in, may award &100 for the first person, $70 for the second, $40 for the third and nothing the rest.

In proportional, payouts are determined according to a percentage scale. Percentages are determined by the number of participants and increase payout positions as number of participants increase.