With around 100 million active players worldwide, poker is definitely one of the most enjoyed games. This is a game of skills and strategies that involves you making fast decisions. The strategic nature of the game is one of the biggest reasons behind its popularity, making people take part in poker tournaments. These tournaments are extremely fun to take part in and help you become a winner solely based on your brain power.
However, these tournaments tend to involve a few different steps, understanding which is always a must. Here, we will tell you how these tournaments work. This will help in making you more aware before you enter the arena.
Understanding Poker Tournament Formats
Even though all the tournaments that you play on a poker apk seem the same, there are many differences between all of them. So, it is important you start by understanding the different formats of the game before you start taking part in them.
Difference between Tournaments and Cash Games
Tournaments and Cash Games are different in many ways. Some of the basic points of differences between the two are:
| Point of Differences | Tournaments | Cash Games |
| Entry and exit | A player must stay in the game until they are eliminated in any round. | All players are allowed to join or leave the game at any point based on their wish. |
| Value of chip | Chips are just points and the ultimate goal of the game is to get more chips than your opponent. | Chips are equivalent to the value of real money and these are cashed out immediately. |
| Blind structure | The cost of the blinds is increased throughout the game, preferably every 15 minutes. | The blinds in cash games depend on the stake it stays the same for each hand. |
| Navigating a loss | There is no chance of staying in the game if you lose all your chips. In this case, you will automatically be eliminated. | You can continue staying in the game even after you lose all your chips or money. You will just be required to buy-in again to continue playing. |
| Strategies for winning | Becoming a winner at a poker tournament involves you constantly managing your chip stack. These are the best poker tips you can use to stay in the game. | Cash games involve you making optimal decisions in each hand to consistently win over time. |
Common Tournament Types
Some of the basic types of tournaments that you must know before downloading a poker apk are:
- Freezeout: This format involves no rebuys. This means you are out of the game once you lose your chips.
- Rebuy & Add-on: During this one, all players can rebuy chips within a set period. However, add-ons are available only in the last level of the game.
- Sit & Go: This one does not involve any advanced registration and it is a comparatively fast match once it starts. However, the match only starts when the required number of players join the match, till then everyone is required to wait.
- Bounty & Knockout Tournaments: This game is quite fun and it involves assigning a portion of each player’s buy-in as a “bounty”. The one who eliminates all the players gets to achieve this bounty at the end of the game.
- Multi-Table Tournaments: During this one, all players start with the same amount of chips but the one who runs out of them is automatically eliminated. There are hundreds or thousands of players competing against each other to win chips.
Buy-Ins and Tournament Registration
All tournaments start with a registration step, and the same is true for the one you play on a poker apk. Some of the key points that you should remember about this are:
What is a Buy-In?
This is primarily the entry fee that you pay to take part in a poker tournament. After that, this amount is contributed to the overall prize pool. This amount is also broken down into two parts which are Prize pool + tournament fee or rake.
The value of buy-in varies among different tournaments. For instance, this generally ranges from a small amount for casual players. On the other hand, the stakes are quite high for professional poker events.
Simple Steps of the Registration Process
The registration process for a poker tournament is quite simple and easy to follow. Some of the steps that you will be required to follow are:
- Select a tournament that you want to take part in.
- Provide all the necessary details on the platform.
- Pay the required buy-in amount assigned by the platform.
How Blinds and Blind Structures Work
Understanding the blinds and their structure is a must for all players. This is undoubtedly the best poker tip that you can get from any poker expert. This, in turn, simplifies the entire game and helps you in winning in the end.
What Are Blinds and Why Do They Matter?
Blinds are commonly known as forced bets and they are increased over time to create a sense of urgency among players. This urgency created through blinds forces players to make some moves, increasing the chances of making a mistake. Moreover, blinds also have a big role to play when it comes to escalating set time intervals or levels.
During turbo tournaments, there are much shorter levels which automatically means that the blinds eat away the stack faster than usual. On the other hand, hyper-turbo poker tournaments have extremely rapid blind jumps, which create a push/fold dynamic.
However, after playing every few hands, all players are required to post small blinds and big blinds. The small ones are half the size of the bigger ones and these are placed by every player who sits to the left of the dealer button. However, the dealer button does not stay limited to one place, these rotate making the blinds move around the table.
How Blinds Increase Over Time
Blind levels are increased at scheduled intervals. This means this increases after every 10–20 minutes. As a result, there is constant pressure on the players to take action before their chip stacks shrink. It is important to avoid all chances of the chip stack shrinking if you don’t want to limit your options in the game. This is more important because being in a similar situation makes you more vulnerable in the game, and increases chances of losing.
Prize Pool Distribution & Pay-out Structures
Prize pool distribution is a major part of the game. The amount of pool or total prize money is based on the buy-ins minus the rake. The rake is the amount that goes towards the gaming platform as a participation fee. This means the more players in the game, the larger the prize pool.
On the other hand, the pay-out structure in poker can be of a few different types. Some of the pay-out structures of the game are:
- Top-heavy pay-outs: During this, a small percentage of players who reach the final table get to achieve higher prizes in the game.
- Flat pay-outs: During this one, the winner of the game gets a good percentage of the entire prize pool.
Conclusion
Taking part in poker tournaments is great if you are looking for structured competition with varying buy-ins, increasing blinds, and prize pool pay-outs. However, you will have to understand buy-ins, blinds, and pay-out structures to achieve long-term success in a tournament. Through this blog, we worked on telling you all these things that you should know about a tournament. We are sure that these will be more than enough for your understanding.