What is a Poker Tournament Articles | Poker

By: Richard Bleuze

What is a Poker Tournament

A poker tournament begins at a predetermined start time with each player either given a ticket or buying a ticket to the event.  In addition, each  player in the poker tournament starts out at the same time with the same number of chips.

Players in the poker tournament play until they are eliminated by losing all of their chips.  Usually a set number of finishers (typically the top 3 winners of the starting field in the poker tournament) get paid on a descending scale from the winner down to the last paid finishing spot.

All other poker tournament players who finish below the lowest paid spot leave the poker tournament with nothing but a story to tell except that they participated in the poker tournment.

Poker tournments, as a rule, allow the players to re-buy and cash-out.  In addition, poker tournament plays see the blinds increase on a predetermined schedule.

A difference often seen in a cash game and a poker tournament is the size of stacks.  In a cash game, the stacks are typically closer to each other than in a poker tournament, where some players will have many times that of the average stack.

A successful poker tournament player needs to understand how to play with all stack sizes.

Speaking of stack sizes, a poker tournament player must consider the size of their stack.  How you play in a poker tournament will depend on the size of your stack.

The size of your stack is measured in two ways

1.Your stack in comparison to the average stack size
2.Your stack in relation to the blinds.

The more chips you have, the more you are able to risk.  In other words, you can make more risker plays if you have more chips available.  The same play, on the other hand, might be foolish if you only had a small amount of chips.

Remember, that the most important thing to understand in a poker tournament is that your chips are your tournament life.

When you run out of chips, your poker tournament time is over!  Thus, potect your chips like your life depends on it.

There are three basic poker tournament stacks, the player must also regonize the various poker tournament stages:.  They are:

The first stage is what I call the early stage of a poker tournament.  In this stage, everyone gets to play in the poker tournament.  At this stage, everyone is on an equal footing and it is usually hard to find anyone looking to gamble.

People in this stage are rarely looking to get it all in with anything unless they have a great hand or they are trying to build a big stack early through sheer aggression.  More often than not, though, they have a great hand.

The goal is to make it through the early stage with average or above chips, giving you room to maneuver as you enter the middle stage.

The second stage or middle stage will range from being deep-stacked at the start to short-stacked near the end.  In this second stage the chips are quickly becoming more valuable, each round of blinds potentially bringing you one step closer to elimination.

It is at this stage that you can no longer afford to sit around waiting for only the best hands.  You need to start taking risks to keep yourself sitting with a nice health stack.  If you do not, you will be forced to take a risk since your stack is too short your only move left is all in.

Your goal in the middle stage is simply to stay alive and get yourself into the money.  Just remember, a poker tournament pro cares little about making the money and plays to win at all times.  Once you are into the money, you have entered the 3rd stage of the poker tournament.

This stage often will have many players with very few chips, and a few players with a lot of them.  It is at this stage of the poker tournament that everyone is willing to gamble.  Players at this stage know that they are in the money and are no longer care about going bust and are aiming to the win the poker tournament at all times.

During this stage, you need to play very aggressively and make few or no mistakes.  And, of course, get lucky at the right times to have a shot at the title. 

More often than not, the blinds are very large and many stacks being very short.  Thus, most players in the poker tournament will be playing a simple all-in or fold game.  You need to be willing to take coin flips, and have the luck to win them if you want to finish in first.

To be a good poker player in a poker tournament, you need to read every article, book, forum thread and webpage you can find.  In addition, watch poker on TV, listen to webcasts, and watch strategy videos.  But in addition to the above, you are going to have to play as much poker as you can.

The more poker tournaments that you play, the better you will become at playing them.  Many of the best poker tournament players play hundreds to thousands of poker tournaments each year.  Remember, do not be afraid to play in a poker tournament.  The more you play, the better you will get.

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