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Poker Tournament Basics

April 25, 2008

There are several variations of the basic game of poker, and even different ways that those games can be played. You may prefer a simple sitdown format like a ring game, but the real draw for the majority is tournament play. These could be Sit N Go poker tournaments or bigger multi table poker tournaments.

 Both ring and tournament poker games share the basics like chips, a dealer, a table, a deck, and some players. The card combinations don’t change, and neither does the betting format. This is where the similarities between ring games and tournaments end and where the strategies for both also diverge.

Thanks to massive media coverage tournaments have become a very popular way to play, so some players may have never even sat at a ring game. Alternately, ring games are basically your everyday poker room games, which means regulars might have thus far avoided tournament play.

The feature that clearly separates the two is how the game progresses. In a ring game you can
play as long as you have the money to buy more chips, and you can leave the table and cash out
whenever you please. The size of the pot is determined on a hand-by-hand basis, as are your cumulative wins and losses.

In a poker tournament, the only money you spend is on the initial buy-in, and potentially a rebuy-in if the option is available. All players start with the same amount of chips. If you lose your last chip you are out of the game, no questions asked, which is why tournament play is often much more conservative. The player that ends the tournament with the most chips is the winner and takes the largest percentage of a pot derived from the original buy-ins.

While it is important to play tight in a tournament, you also must play aggressively. The blinds
go up consistently, which means keeping your original stack won’t get you far in later hands unless you continue to build it. It also means that players are progressively taking higher risks to get the most chips before the tournament ends.

Safe bets don’t come along often in a tournament where you might have ten advanced players at one table, and where a single bad hand can put you out of the game. So when you get a really
strong hand, you need to take full advantage of it. Don’t slow hand your monster when you
could be pumping the pot.

It’s easy to say that to come out on top, all you have to do is win more than you lose, but in a
tournament there may be dozens or even hundreds of other players, and they all understand what it takes to win too. A small part of winning is luck, but the majority is playing smart and betting hard.

We also recommend 4kingpoker.com for online poker tournaments &
milliondollarpokerguide.com for more poker guides & poker strategy. 

Written by rob · Filed Under Poker Strategy 

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  1. Poker Strategy on pkrpokerreview.com | 4king poker blog on April 28th, 2008 3:32 am

    […] Poker Tournament Basics […]

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