Understanding the logistics of poker tournaments

Tournaments are poker competitions where all players play at the same time and continue to play until there is only one player left. Tournaments are fun to play, have low entry fees and offer a huge prize pool to win. For these reasons they are very popular. They are an inexpensive way for novice poker players to learn the game, as well as providing a place for more experienced players to gain experience.

While there are many different types of poker games played in online casinos and rooms, tournaments are generally reserved for Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and 7-card Stud, because these games have a large following.

Poker tournaments can have anywhere from 6 players (single table tournaments) to thousands of players for larger events. Big tournaments consist of many tables, each table has 8-10 players. Tables are slowly removed from the tournament as players are eliminated, with players being balanced from table to table as needed. (These are known as multi-table tournaments.) Eventually all but the last table will be eliminated and these last 8-10 players will play until only one of them remains.

Tournament Basics

To play in a tournament players have to pay two fees. They must pay an entry fee to the poker room hosting the tournament to cover the expenses involved. This gives the player an assigned seat and a set amount of tournament chips to play with (these chips have no cash value). Players also pay an entry fee. The entry fee is retained and paid out as prizes. The prize payout differs from tournament to tournament, but usually it all goes to the lucky few players who make it to the final table.

The object of a tournament is to win all the chips. All players in the tournament start with the same amount of chips to play with and they all start play at the same time. Players play until they lose all their chips and then they are eliminated from the tournament. A tournament goes on and on, often for several hours, until only one person remains. As the game progresses, the stakes increase (the blinds double at a timed interval), making it increasingly difficult for players with small stacks to stay in the game.

Players receive cash prizes based on their final position in the tournament. The top finishers win the most money; the 1st place winner usually receives around 30% of the total prize money, the 2nd place winner around 20% and so on. The number of winners and the size of the payouts depend on the rules of the tournament being played and the number of people playing.

Buybacks and add-ons

Some poker tournaments allow players a rebuy option. This rebuy option allows players to buy more chips if they run out of chips at the start of the tournament. A player can buy the same amount of chips with which he started the tournament. Some poker tournaments allow unlimited rebuys during the first hour of play, while other tournaments allow only one rebuy.

An additional option is similar to the buyback option. The add-ons differ in that they are usually only offered once at the end of the rebuy period and can be purchased regardless of how many tokens you have. As the name implies, these tokens are added to your token stack.

All proceeds from rebuys and add-ons are added to the prize pool minus house fees (if applicable).

Bet

Tournament betting is structured with a betting limit that increases regularly. Betting limit changes occur differently depending on the tournament; some are timed, while others increase the limit after playing a set number of rounds.

Balance and collapse tables

The biggest tournaments start with more than one table, each with 8-10 players. As the tournament progresses, players will be eliminated and the number of players at each table will not be the same. For the tournament to be fair, the number of players at each table must be the same, so organizers move players from table to table in an attempt to keep all 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.

Table collapsing is the practice of deleting tables once there are enough empty spaces between the rest of the tables to do so. Therefore, with 10-player tables, when there are 10 empty spaces, the players at a table move to empty spaces and that table is out of play.