Tournaments

The poker games that you see on your TV screen are all big and famous tournaments. Tournaments are poker format that require every contestant to pay a certain buy-in + tournament fee. For example one of the biggest tournaments is The World Series of Poker Main Event, which has a buy-in of 10 000$ + 500$ - that means 10 000$ from each player go towards the huge prize pool and 500$ go to the sponsors.

Each player starts with certain amount of chips and usually they cannot re-buy (unless the tournament allows re-buys) and plays until he loses all of his chips or wins the tournament, collecting the chips of everyone else. The blinds grow steadily, and the stacks become shallower and shallower as time goes by so the strategy is very complex and difficult. It requires different approach in the early, middle and late stages. In my next post I will discuss further how I play the different stages of the tournament and will probably give away some tricks that I use.

Although the tournaments are very exciting and offer a chance to win huge prizes, they have a lot of disadvantages. First of all, most of the times you will not cash so you will lose your buy-in and be left empty handed. Secondly, tournaments take very long time and it is very disappointing and annoying to you play 4-5 hours straight without even cashing. Thirdly, bad beats have usually significant and crucial impact on your performance so if you are very emotional and these things disturb your psyche, better stay away from tournaments.

However I recommend to everyone interested in poker to try playing tournaments. It's a really exciting experience which will help you develop your own style and improve your game significantly. I wish you good luck and I'll see you at the tournament tables!