Multi-Table Tournaments

It has been said before in this poker school, but once again it is true: this is what you have seen on TV. The World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker, and other late night poker programmes are all tournaments. Poker tournaments – unlike cash games – are televised because there is one winner!

All players who has entered the same tournament compete against each other. At the beginning no one has an advantage over anyone else. It is all fair and square, same conditions for everyone. One player ends up on top, although other results are "winning" positions as well. Approximately the top 10 % end up “in the money”; with fewer entrants more people are paid. For example: in a tournament with 70 entries, 10 are usually paid a prize. Top position gets the most money though.

In a multi-table poker tournament all players begin with a set chip stack. As the word "multi" suggests, several tables will be playing at the same time within the tournament. Each player uses their starting chips to battle the competition. The battle constitutes of trying to get a hold of the other players chips, eliminating competition, or just staying in the tournament as others are sent packing. Each player does this until they are either out of the tournament or end up as the winner.

As the tournament progresses, the blinds (and ante) increase incrementally. As players are eliminated tables are "broken", the players at a table are relocated to a tables with empty seats. That is fewer and fewer tables are left, and the poker played at them are played with more and more chips. The culmination is the final table where the last remaining players gather. Now, empty seats remain empty, and (unless there is some unusual multi-way action on the end) the winner is determined by one-to-one play. At the end, the winner has all the chips and a nice first prize!

There is no rake in multi-table tournaments. Instead the organizer or poker room in question takes a fee for your entry. The fee is typically about 10 % of the buy in. So a tournament might be labeled as a: $10 + $1 NL Texas Hold'em Freezeout Multi-Table Tournament. This means that $1 is taken as a fee. $10 goes towards the prize pool. So with 173 entrants, there will be a $1730 prize pool. The "freezeout" part is explained below.

Pros and Cons with Tournaments

There are two main reasons to play tournaments. It is exciting and there can be really large prizes.

If you find the above description of a poker tournament exciting, then you will get a thrill playing one. The pure enjoyment of beating everyone else is larger than winning the same amount of money in a cash game. Winning in a poker tournament "proves" that you are the best. Any poker is played to win, but in a tournament it is truly a competition.

Since many players are contributing to the prize pool, the reward can become really huge in comparison to the risk. Whenever this is true, it is also true that the likeliness of winning goes down. You are investing a sum of money to fight for the illusive large payout awarded to the first spot and at least aiming to come in the money. With that attitude, it is disturbing to play for four hours just to be eliminated a few positions too early to be eligible for any prize money.

When playing tournaments you get a lot of good poker for your money. Everyone tries their best in a tournament, and crazy-aggressive players are usually eliminated quite early on. This equates to valuable experience for inexperienced poker players. Just remember that the bottom 90 % does not win anything, and the big money is reserved for the best. Thereby any stable monetary goals are hard to establish. Do not forget that poker is gambling, luck is a decisive in any given tournament. Money won and lost will fluctuate a lot.

Freezeout Tournaments

A "freezeout" tournament, is a tournament in which: if you loose your chips, then you are out. There is no way back into the tournament. In other words, it is the basic tournament structure with the word "freezeout" added to the name in order to distinguish it from other variants.

Re-buy Tournaments

In a "re-buy" tournament: if you loose your chips, then you are allowed to buy in again. It is only allowed to re-buy during a set "re-buy period". The re-buy period might for example be the first hour of the tournament. There can also be limitation to the number of re-buys. If there is such a limitation, no more than one or three re-buys are usually allowed (they still have to be within the re-buy period. It is actually allowed to re-buy at anytime that you do not have more chips than your starting chip stack.

A re-buy tournament is usually combined with an "add-on". Then every player is given the choice to pay some money to add some chips to their chip-stack after the re-buy period is over.

As there is a possibility to come into the tournament again even if you run out of chips in the beginning, granted it will cost money (of which all but the fee goes towards the total prize pool), the early stages of a re-buy tournament can be wilder. If you want to double your stack in the beginning and also make an add-on, the effective prize is also higher than it seems at first glance. Otherwise it is the same as a regular multi-table tournament.