Free Poker

There are many types of online poker tournaments, all with different rules, structures and buy-ins. Below are the 6 main types of real money tournaments that can be found in online poker rooms with a brief outline of each to help you choose the best type of tournament for your style or preference of play.

Single Table Tournaments (Sit n’ Go’s)

Single table tournaments (or Sit n’ Go’s are they are more commonly referred to) are the most popular poker tournaments found online. At any given time there are tens of thousands of Sit n’ Go’s running with buy-ins ranging from $1 (or even free) all the way to high stakes $5,000.00 games featuring some of the best online players in the world. There are 10 players in a Sit n’ Go. 1st place will receive 50% of the prize pool, 2nd will receive 30% and 3rd place will receive the remaining 20%.

Head’s up Tournaments

Head’s up tournaments are quickly becoming more and more popular. The premise is quite simple. 2 players pay the same buy-in and whoever wins takes it all. There are heads up multi-table tournaments where the field is cut in half after every match until only 2 players battle it out for the lion’s share of the prize pool.

Multi-table cash and guaranteed tournaments

There are hundreds of multi-table online tournaments that are ran every day across all the online poker sites. Again these tournament buy-in’s can be as cheap as $1, or as high as $5,000.00 or more. Often times a poker room will promote a tournament as having a guaranteed prize pool. These are quite popular, as the poker room will pay the difference of the guaranteed prize pool if there are not enough players to fill it. The “free” money poker room’s give away in these types of tournaments is called an “overlay”.

Satellite tournaments

Anyone that has watched the televised World Series of Poker is probably familiar with Satellite tournaments. Chris Moneymaker won his seat to the WSOP through a $30 satellite tournament on Pokerstars.com. Satellite tournaments are tournaments that do not pay out a large amount of the total players from the prize pool, but instead award only the top few finishers with the prize of a buy-in to another, much more expensive tournament. 3 of the last 5 World Series of Poker winners won their seat from an online satellite tournament.

Rebuy tournaments

The biggest difference in Rebuy tournaments from other types of tournaments is that when a player is knocked out in the first few hours of a rebuy tourney, they are given the option of “rebuying” or paying another entrance fee for a brand new stack of chips and another chance at the money. Additionally, players may also add chips onto their existing stack once during the beginning of the tournament. This additional boost to the players stack is called an “add-on”.

No matter what your particular poker style or preferences, there is a type of tournament to match it. With the variety of games and structures of games found online, it’s no wonder that online poker has grown in popularity and has dominated the marketplace over live casinos for several years.