Why play tournaments online?
Because they're fun and profitable! The chance of a
big payoff is a huge attraction not only for you, but also for hundreds of
terrible players who have virtually no chance of winning the event.
These players are known as "dead money". Tournament play is all
about taking advantage of the dead money, and there is plenty of it
online. For a good player, a tournament can be like playing the
lottery, except you can turn the house advantage in your favor, and get to
play a game you enjoy!
Tournaments online are unquestionably more profitable than
live tournaments. The entry fee for online tournaments is much lower
than live tournaments, because it is much cheaper to run a tournament
online. The hands are dealt more than twice as fast, so you can get
the tournament done sooner, collect your prize money and get on with your
day. Online poker also affords a wide range of buy-ins for
tournaments. No live casino could ever afford to run a $1 buy-in
tournament to give you experience, but online cardrooms will do this to
attract players to their bigger games.
In addition, you can play in your underwear, play at
another table (or another tournament!) at the same time, surf online poker
sites, and the list goes on.
How do tournaments work online?
When you enter a tournament, the buy-in is typically
listed in the form of "$10+$1". This means that you will have to pay
$11 to enter the tournament. Of this, $10 goes into the prize pool,
and the server keeps $1 as your entry fee for playing the tournament.
(Note: for most small buy-in events, there is no entry fee. This
will be written as "$3+$0", for example.)
There are two big types of tournaments online. The
first category is sit-and-go tournaments (also called single table
tournaments or SNGs. At small poker sites, you can usually play only
single-table tournaments, as they do not have the user traffic to support
multi-tables.) These tournaments feature ten players (or eight for
7-stud events) each starting with the same number of chips, usually 1000
(1500 at Poker Stars). The blinds start at a low level (5-10 or
10-15) and increase at pre-set time intervals. Play continues until
one player has all the chips, with the players ranked in the reverse order
of elimination. The typical pay structure is 50% of the prize pool
for first place, 30% for second place and 20% for third place.
The second and more popular type are multi-table
tournaments. In this format, the server creates one tournament
table for each 10 entrants. As players are eliminated, the tables
are consolidated. For example, if 600 players enter, there will be
60 tables. After 10 players are eliminated, the server will
consolidate the 590 remaining players into 59 tables, and every time ten
more players are eliminated, one more table is consolidated and removed.
As in single-table tournaments, the blinds increase on pre-set intervals,
usually once every 12 minutes.
The server will pay out a certain number of the top
finishers. Typically they pay 10 players for tournaments with 100 or
fewer entrants, and 10 more for each additional hundred participants.
The payout structures all typically grant considerable favor to those that
make it to the final table, so remember that your goal is always to aim
for the big prizes.
Enough talk. Show me how to win!
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