There is still one other world of Poker beyond all the different table games that have been described. Any Poker game can also be played in a TOURNAMENT form. How does a Tournament work? Well, for starters each player is given and equal stack of what are called "Tournament Chips". These chips are NOT REAL MONEY, they just represent money. You cannot buy food in a casino or tip waitresses with Tournament chips. At the end of a Tournament the casino collects all the chips and just puts them back. When a player loses all of his/her chips they are OUT and must leave. The top 10-20% of the players left in the Tournament are paid accordingly from highest payout to lowest payout. Most Tournaments keep going until only one player remains but sometimes they are stopped short and the players just split the money.

Now you may be asking how the Casino makes any money here since it looks like the players took all the of the prize pool. In actuality there is a small "Casino Fee" on top of the entry fee which is collected. In this case it was $15.00. So for $115.00 you received $1000.00 in Tournament chips and a chance at the Final Table.

The biggest catch to Tournaments is that the small blind and the big blind are raised after every round. A round can be as short as 5 minutes to as long as the World Series of Poker Finals with 2 hour rounds. The amount of the blind raise can be from 25% up to 200%. They are what determine the pace of the Tournament along with your strategy. As you can see each Tournament will be very different in it's skill vs. luck ratio. The shorter the rounds, and greater the blind increase increments are the more luck will be involved. This is why EVERY Tournament has what's called a "STRUCTURE SHEET". You should look this over if your not a veteran so you can have a better idea about what your getting into.

For example, a $10.00 Tournament with 300 in starting chips (1 hundred chip , 2 fifties, 2 twenty fives, and 10 fives) with 10 minute rounds and the blinds going up 150% per round would be a 90% luck and 10% skill contest. However, ONE HOUR rounds and a $2000.00 buy with 2000 in starting chips and blind increases of 75%/round would be a much different story. Most Tournaments over $100.00 will give you a pretty fair shake and the cheap ones are still fun and are a great way to learn a game without going broke at the tables. Instead of losing over $100.00 every session until you learn a game it would be in your best interest to just play some $20-$60 Tournaments. I knew a guy who spent over $10, 000.00 month just to learn how to play Hold'em at the highest stakes table in the casino. If you have that kind of money I guess you don't need the Tournaments but most people don't live off their interest.

I personally learned how to play ALL the high low games by playing $13.00 Tournament every other day. Since the high-low pots involve players betting their low hands while others bet there high hands, the pots are usually larger so I didn't want to learn the expensive way.

Below are a few actual structure sheets from tournaments in California casinos.

After you merely learn how to play a Tournament decently you must also understand that the deep level overall strategy of a Poker Tournament is much different than when you playing a 'live' game at the casino tables or at home. A very easy example would be to just look at the payout table of the Tournaments above. If there were 10 players left and you were one of them with the second or third lowest stack, you might want to FOLD ALMOST ANYTHING and just wait. The other shorter stacks will just get "Blinded Out" and eliminated before you, then when your in the money and have "made it" you can go back to playing normal. If it was a limit Hold'em Tournament you should throw down Ace-Jack, Ace-Nine-Suited, 8-8...ect. Those would normally be fine hands but given the situation it wouldn't make any sense to play one of those and get knocked out 10th and thus wasting ALL of the time you spent getting to the final. You can see how this is much different than any 'live game' play. The opposite situation would also be true. If you have a HUGE amount of chips and it's getting very close to the Final Table, you also might want to put on some breaks.

If you have a huge stack and only a couple people are left before the money you could go play against them with marginal hands since you can't get hurt. What I mean by that is that if you play something like a Queen-Ten against them and lose you will only lose a small percent of your stack and still be in position to place in the top 9, but if you knock out the short stacks your immediately in the money plus your in position for placing in the top three with your even larger stack.

Well you are only a mathematical favorite against any ONE hand not seven. Plus if that really ever happened you know that one of the other players would also have AA, so now would could only tie him or lose to the others. But the main thing you should understand about this example is that if those seven players had the same amount if chips, just by folding and watching the seven become one you would now be guaranteed 3rd place money. In a live game you can NEVER have ANY money given to you by folding let alone 750k. If it were a live no limit game and you had like $400 in front of you there would be no problem to try to get seven to one for all you money with Aces, but if you were to get paid to fold why risk anything. Remember ONLY in a Tournament could a situation arise in which you could get paid to fold.