Poker Tournaments and its Kinds

Poker tournaments emerge out as a competition between poker players. This is because in these tournaments, players need to compete with each other to get all the chips. Normal casino games are not the same. In such games, no playing hand is related to another. The players can also leave or quit the play as and when desired. As far as poker tournaments are concerned, such flexibility does not exist. In tournaments, the game continues until one hand wins over all the chips.

Types of Poker Tournaments

There are four kinds of poker tournaments:

1. Elimination Tournaments
2. Re-buy Tournaments
3. Shootout Tournaments
4. Satellites

Elimination Tournaments
These tournaments are most frequent, wherein all hands contain equal amount of chips initially. After one hand attains all the chips in the game, the play is continued. Once any one player is eliminated, the left-out players are again seated at fewer and fewer tables. While the winner gets all the chips in the end, other players in the game are also considered in the payout structure. For instance, if there are ninety-five players in total, who start the tournament, the final table of around nine players will be rewarded in a way that the eighth player will be getting a larger prize than ninth, the seventh player getting more than eighth, etc.

Re-buy Tournaments
In such tournaments, the basic structure is that the players who lose all their chips are permitted to re-buy or buy again more ships and can resume playing. In this tournament, the play becomes more aggressive as compared to the other tournaments, as players are not eliminated from the game, rather allowed to re-buy a few more chips. A larger amount of prize money is involved in such tournaments, but the initial cost involved is more or less standard cost.

Shootout Tournaments
Shootout tournaments are complete opposite of Re-buy tournaments. In this case, no table gets combined. In fact, as soon as one player loses out all his chips, he is eliminated from the game or he is bound to leave the tournament. Each table shall have a single winner, as no table is combined. Thereafter, all the table winners proceed to the final round of the tournament. For instance, if there are sixteen tables in a tournament, all the tables are engaged in the game unless one comes out to be the winner. That is, the players get eliminated, until one of them shines out in the end with all the chips in his hand. Such tournaments usually last for many hours, that is, actually less than the number of elimination events.

Satellites
These tournaments are primary in nature and so are known as “mini” tournaments. For instance, before a tournament begins, the players are required to pay a certain amount of money as an entry fee with the winner advancing to the main event consequently.