Step by Step Guide to Hitting that First Big Poker Tournament Win I often wonder how many of today’s poker pros would never have followed the poker path if it were not for a tournament win early on… or a hot run in the cash games. By the same logic there may well be people sitting in ‘regular’ careers who could and would have been poker pros but for losing one coin flip at a vital moment! This page gives you an overview of some of the main strategy and game selection skills needed to give you a better chance of hitting that first tournament win. Variance is huge in poker tournaments

The strategies required to win poker at tournament level differ significantly from those used to win ring games. The key for all players is to adapt to the different approaches needed to win at both forms of poker. In an online poker tournament, the stakes are constantly raised, forcing players to make quick and accurate decisions. Tables are broken up and new tables formed when players fold or lose all their chips. Therefore different types of strategy are called for and must be adapted to whether a player's stack is short, medium or large. To succeed at an online poker tournament, it is

Small stakes online poker tournaments are fantastic fun. They can be frustrating at times — I’ll give you that — but for the most part, it is difficult not to enjoy yourself while competing in one. They are also potentially lucrative beasts, not least because they tend to attract players in droves. On some sites — in particular PokerStars — tournaments with buy-ins as small as $1-$10 may see several thousand hopefuls take to the virtual felt in the hope of turning their tiny investments into much more meaningful sums. As you can imagine, the majority of these huge fields are populate

The three major regulated online poker sites that offer the best online poker tournaments are PokerStars, Partypoker and 888 Poker. PokerStars has by far the most traffic and offers a weekly flagship tournament called the Sunday Million ($200+$15 buy-in). The event boasts a $1 million guarantee with numerous satellites running throughout the week. Partypoker has established itself as a competitive online poker tournament force in recent years due to its pro-friendly rakeback rewards and rising popularity through marquee live events. Although the player fields are typically smaller th

Tournaments have been a mainstay of the online poker scene for more than a decade. Every weekend, players find their way to marquee final tables with aspirations of adding a significant amount of money to their poker bankroll. And in a few cases, they achieve a life-changing score. Here are 6 reasons why online poker tournaments are popular. (We’ve included a separate section near the end if you’d like to learn more about the best poker sites for online tournaments.) #1: Live Streams on Twitch Poker Online poker tournaments are all the rage on Twitch Poker, where big name personali

Betting in tournaments can take one of three forms: In a structured (fixed limit) betting system, bets and raises are restricted to specific amounts, though these amounts typically increase throughout the tournament. For example, for a seven-card stud tournament with the stakes at 10/20, raises would be $10 in the first three rounds of betting, and $20 in the latter rounds. Semi-structured betting provides ranges for allowed raises. Usually, in this format, one may not raise less than a previous player has raised. For example, if one player raises $20, it would be illegal for another

The most common playing format for poker tournaments is the "freezeout" format. All players still playing in a tournament constitute a dynamic pool. Whenever a player loses all his chips and gets eliminated, his table shrinks. To combat the constant shrinking of tables and avoid having tables play with varying numbers of players, players are moved between tables, with unnecessary tables getting closed as the tournament progresses. In the end, all remaining players are seated on just one table, known as the "final table". Most sit and go tournaments are freezeouts. In some tournaments, kno