Common Online Poker Tournaments

As the online poker industry gets bigger and bigger players demand more action other than the same poker games played at online poker rooms. The industry's answer comes in the form of online poker tournaments. The standard online poker domain may offer many variants of poker tournaments. Most of them have the same structure with few differences among that such as the size of the offered prizes, the speed of the tournament or the tournaments' stages that a poker player must go through in order to win. Every poker room has its own unique tournaments and if you want to see one in action or play in one view our online poker rooms.

Online poker tournaments are very popular among poker players; they offer them a chance to enjoy unusual poker games. These tournaments come in few forms and we have gathered the most common online poker tournaments in this article:

Freezouts – This is the most basic online poker tournament that may offer small to large prizes, it depends on the poker site you chose. The main idea in these tournaments is that all players starts with the same bankroll and they cannot purchase more chips during the tournament. The moment a player loses all his money he is tossed out of the tournament and he cannot join it again. Freezouts tournaments take place everyday in all major online poker rooms.

Turbo Tournaments – A Turbo Tournament is like a Freezout tournament but the blinds increase faster. Every 3-5 minutes the blinds increase and so poker players cannot play tight and conservatively – they must win as much as they can fast. Turbo Tournaments are not easy and most of the times winners are simply lucky players that receive good starting hands.

Winner Takes it All – In this online poker tournament players that come first takes the entire pot, which is tends to be pretty big. In other tournaments players that come in high places may receive some amount of cash, but in the Winner Takes it All poker tournaments only one player wins.

Add On\Re-Buy – This a poker tournament variant that allows players to buy more chips during the first stage of it. Players may also buy their way back into the tournament after they lost all their chips and their seat. This tournament may take more time than usual tournaments – from a whole day to one week, depends on the amount of players that begin the tournament.

Satellite Tournaments – An online poker satellite tournament doesn't offer cash as a prize but a seat at a more esteem tournament. Satellite tournaments may offer the winner a seat at the World Poker Tour or the World Series of Poker. It may also offer you a seat at a less prestige but still major poker tournaments. Many times professional poker players would rather to win their seat by winning a satellite tournament than to buy it and to pay the entire fee of such seat.

Step/Shootout Tournament – A Step tournament is consisted of few "step" (stages) that players must go through in order to reach the final table. You pay the buy-in amount and you start to play, if you win – you go up to the next level. You can also win second and third place and receive the right to play at a lower Step or in the same Step again. You can also enter the tournament at high steps for a bigger buy-in amount. The first prize in a Step tournament is huge since it is accumulated from players' buy-in money from all Steps.

The Shootout tournament is the same as a Step tournament but you cannot win your place once you lose or buy it. All players start from the first step and only the players that win get to move up in the chain of steps. Most of the time players that reach the final table get a certain piece of the accumulated money that this tournament produces.

Poker rooms may add other online tournaments, but usually such contests would follow one of the above structures or a combination of them.

Daniel Jenkins, Editorial Staff. 25-01-2006