Tournament Formats

Tournaments are played in various formats and betting limits and are applicable to both live and online poker.

KNOCKOUT and/or FREEZE-OUT TOURNAMENTS

In cash/ring games, you play until you’re tired of playing (or you run out of chips - whichever comes first), and you cash-in any remaining chips, marking the end of your session. But in tournaments, players have to leave the game when they lose their chips and the winner is the last person standing, who also has all of the chips. All tournaments are played this way (knockout format), otherwise it’s a cash game and it would take forever to determine a winner. These are also called freeze-out tournaments when the players aren’t allowed to buy more chips after they get knocked out.

RE-BUY TOURNAMENTS

While it’s true all tournaments are based on a knockout format, in re-buy tournaments, you can buy more chips if you go broke or are about to. This is usually limited to the first thirty minutes or so of play, and there can be a limit to how many times you can re-buy (or an unlimited amount of times, but if you’re being knocked out a lot, perhaps it’s a sign you need to log more hours playing online poker). Re-buy tournaments are great for people who tend to go out quickly and who’d rather spend more time playing the game than watching other people play.

SIT & GO (SIT ‘N GO, OR SNG) TOURNAMENTS

Sit & Go tournaments are the bread & butter of online poker - when you read about poker sites - this one included - raving about how great PokerStars.com is because they have a tournament starting every few seconds, this is largely due to the high volume of Sit & Go tournaments that they host. As the name suggests, players register for a tournament and the game starts as soon as there are enough players. So if you’re playing on a popular site like PokerStars.com, UltimateBet.com or AbsoluteBet.com, it doesn’t matter if you sign up for a small tournament with only six players, or a bigger one with five thousand, you’ll never have to wait long for the tournament to start.

To access the Sit & Go tournaments at PokerStars.com, click on the ‘Sit & Go’ tab in the PokerStars lobby, and then double-click on the tournament that you want to register for (or click on it in the menu, and then click on ‘register’). If you change your mind and you don’t want to play and the game hasn’t started yet, you can click on ‘unregister’ and your account will be credited the entrance fee/buy-in.

There are play-money Sit & Go tables at PokerStars.com, and that should be the first place new players go when making the transition from cash games to tournaments. They have low and high stakes, and Limit and No-Limit games, in addition to poker variants other than Texas Holdem, so before you start playing a format new to you with real money, make sure you’ve had lots of practice first on these free tables.

FREEROLL

SATELLITE TOURNAMENTS

Satellite tournaments are tournaments with either free (which would make it a freeroll tournament) or affordable buy-ins and where the winner (or top finishers) can win a seat in an expensive tournament by winning the money for the buy-in. This is how Chris Moneymaker won the buy-in money ($10,000) when he won the 2003 WSOP Main Event. He first won a $39 Sit & Go tournament with eighteen players at PokerStars.com, where the prize was a seat in a sixty-player tournament, whose prize was the $10,000 buy-in for a seat at the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas. This is the dream of all online poker players: to make a small investment (the buy-in for a satellite), and winning millions of dollars just like Moneymaker (who won $2.5 million). Super satellites are tournaments that have more than one winner and offer the buy-in money to dozens of top-finishing players. They’ve become extremely popular in recent years.

REGIONAL TOURNAMENTS

As you can probably guess, regional tournaments are limited to players based on where they said they live when they signed up. PokerStars.com will occasionally have limited time-only, regional tournaments, such as when they have two weeks of Sit & Go tournaments for people registered to a country in the Americas, with winners having won a seat to their America’s Cup. They also host tournaments where players from one country play against another one, such as Canada versus USA. There are also regional tournaments that are limited to players to just one country (such as TSN’s freeroll only for Canadian players). PokerStars.com will only display regional tournaments that you’re entitled to play in.

SPECIAL TOURNAMENTS

Charity tournaments, special weekly freerolls, and any other unique tournaments are listed in the ‘special’ tournament section of an online poker site (such as those at PokerStars.com). This is also where you’ll find tournaments with unique prizes, such as winning a seat on a poker cruise and other poker vacations, so make sure you have a peek at the special tournaments tab and see if there are any that interest you.

Betting Limits

Just as like cash games, tournaments can be played with one of the three betting structures: Limit, Pot-Limit and No-Limit. In Limit games, you’re restricted to how much you can bet and raise in each round of betting. These are great for beginner players so they don’t lose a lot of money and can stay in the game longer, and for players of all abilities who are familiar with this format and don’t want to play the riskier Pot-Limit and No-Limit. Pot-Limit means you can bet and/or raise up to the amount that is currently in the pot. This is a good stepping stone for players who are used to Limit poker and are interested in playing in No-Limit games. And if you’re ready to start playing in No-Limit games, you definitely want to start by playing in tournaments so you’re only on the hook for the initial entrance fee/buy-in (unlike in a No-Limit cash game where you could potentially make a much bigger dent in your bankroll). PokerStars.com has free Sit & Go tournaments in all three betting structures, so if you haven’t tried playing in a No-Limit tournament before, just dive in and experience the excitement that everyone’s talking about!

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