Tournament Types

A lot of the poker seen on T.V. and played on the internet is tournament poker. This is where a player pays an entrance fee for a certain amount of chips and plays in an attempt to win all the other players chips in the competition. There are different types of tournament available all the time at the poker rooms on the right, and this is a selection of the more popular ones.

Multi Table Tournament (M.T.T.)

A Multi Table Tournament or M.T.T. is one of the most popular forms of poker available online or in your local casino. As has already been said, you generally pay an entry fee, called a buy-in and for that you get a set amount of chips. You will compete against as little as twenty people or as many as ten thousand in some tournaments, and the prize pool is adjusted accordingly.

Unlike cash game poker, in tournament play the blinds rise up in predetermined levels, generally after 10 or 12 minutes. This is done in order to put pressure on players who are waiting for a good hand with which to try and win more chips. As a way of counteracting this, a lot of players adopt an aggressive strategy in order to win chips early.

As a general rule, most online poker rooms like to pay the top 20% of the finishers in any M.T.T., while at the local casino, only the final table of 9 or 10 will get paid out of a field of 200.

M.T.T.’s are generally played in a freeze-out format, which mean that once you have lost all of your chips, you are out of the tournament, although there are other types of M.T.T.’s called rebuy tournaments which allow unlimited rebuys for a certain period of time.

Single Table Tournament (S.T.T.)

Like its bigger brother the single table tournament or S.T.T. is a popular form of poker online for those who only have an hour or so to spare. An S.T.T. is a single table tournament of poker in which generally there are either 9 or 10 entrants playing for three prizes, or there are 5 or 6 entrants playing for two prizes. As in M.T.T.’s the blind structure is timed in order to pressure players into playing hands. The action can be fast paced, but by playing solid ‘ABC poker’ it is quite possible to win prizes in the vast majority of tournaments.

“Sit ‘n’ Go”

From time to time you may see the phrase ‘sit ‘n’ go’. This used to refer to single table tournaments because once the correct number of entrants ‘sat’ (or paid the entrance fee) the tournament would go, or start. Now a large number of poker sites offer multi-table sit ‘n’ go’s with number ranging from twenty, up to three hundred and sixty. Once the required numbers of entrants are ready, the tournament starts and the format is no different to a freeze-out M.T.T.

Satellites and Qualifiers

All poker sites offer players the chance to qualify for a live event, or offer satellites into big buy-in online events for a fraction of the cost to the player. It can be a cost effective way for a player to play an online tournament outside of their normal budget, but it can also be a necessary path to some tournaments such as the World Series of Poker Main Event which costs $10,000 entry fee. A few of the recent winners such as Chris Moneymaker qualified for this through a relatively low cost satellite.