Single Table, Multi Table Poker Tournaments
This lesson includes single table and multi table poker tournaments
information
plus a chip-standing description.
Strictly
speaking, a heads-up tournament is just a specialized variant of single
table tourney. If you omit satellite qualifier
events, where
winning a single table tournament automatically gives you an available
seat in larger poker tournaments in the real life
poker world, you'll find single tournaments almost exclusively
held online.
These on-demand tourneys are simple and
easy: You sign up, then as soon as the tournament table fills,
you
are off and playing.
Multi table tournaments are always
scheduled tourneys where you sign up early during a registration phase.
Occasionally they have caps on the maximum allowable number of
players.
The amount of players determines the
number of
tables in the tourney. Five thousand players in a tournament require
500 tables. When 10 players bust out from the tournament, the poker
site breaks down two tables and arranges all the people from that table
to the spaces left by the busted out players in a method called
rebalancing.
Re-balancing proceeds until the last 10 players remain at the last
table.
Although
multi table tourneys do exist in the real life poker world, the size of
these poker tournaments in the online world is unrivalled.
The
most popular poker sites routinely draw tournaments with nearly 6,000
players, particularly if the entry fee is $4 or less.
Based on
the huge number of entrants, if excellent playing skill and good luck
are on your side, you may take home a few bucks and win.
For
example, a $3 entry no-limit Hold ’Em poker tournament paid $1,500 to
the winner. A more lucrative tournament, a $200 entry-fee affair, paid
$80,000 to the top dog. Not bad for a day’s worth of fun
playing poker.
Additionally, you can parlay
tournament success online into real life tournament
entries.
The final winners of the 2003 and 2004 Poker World Series in Las Vegas
won WSOP seats at multi table poker tournaments in the online poker
world.
The
2003 winner spent $40 for a tournament that gave a $10,000 entry seat
at the WSOP. He ended up grabbing first place in the WSOP and brought
home over $2 million in cash.
These examples of parlays
for exist in the real life poker world as well, but generally
enjoy better popularity in the online poker world.
Chip Standing at Poker Tournaments
Chip
standing is essentially your money position compared to everyone else
at the tournament. If you are familiar with live tournaments,
one
of the things that can drive everybody slowly insane is attempting to
understand the amount of chips you have compared to everyone else.
Theoretically,
players need to keep their tourney chips in plain view. However,
players have found many ways to hide their chips: physical obstructions
like drinks and hands/arms on the table; huge chip
stacks, that
conceal yet more chips and untidy chip heaps without definitive
valuation. Although you can see other player's chips, you
need to
be able to evaluate and count them relative to yours.
When playing poker tournaments online, you can get your chip
standing instantly. All you need to do is to check the tournament lobby
screen to see the full run-down of your standing compared to everyone
else including an accurate chip count for the whole tournament.
You will want to pay attention to these four items:
1) Your current chip standing vs. the tournament average stack.
It
gives you a better idea of how well you are doing in the tourney. Your
standing does not matter much initially in the tournament, but it gets
important when you draw close to the money line and when the tournament
begins to wear down. It's best that you are no lower than 10% below the
average stack. Every time you drop below that level, you need to
tighten your playing style and be sure you maximize the
winning
hands.
2) Your current chip standing vs your opponents at the table.
Your table placement is critical for determining what function you take
at the table and what kind of image you need to project.
3) Your current chip standing in the tourney
For
example, 8th place out of 115 players. At small tourneys, including
single table tourneys on demand, your rank is particularly important
because it provides you with an estimation of your standing compared to
the rest of the players.
For example, if a player gets an early
winning hand and knocks out three opponents, it skews the average. The
place where you stand is not as significant early on at large multi
table tournaments, even if you get a uncommon rush by winning the first
hand in a big multi table tournament and then seeing your rank jump to
1 of 2,000, but it will become critical later on.
Chip standing determines if you are in or out of the cash.
4) Your current chip standing compared to the blinds
If there are fewer than ten big blinds left, you have to drop into the
'short-stack kung fu' mode.
To
complete this series, a lesson about re-buys follows
From
Poker Tournaments: Single Table, Multi Table lesson, return to Learn
Poker Games
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