Online Poker Tournaments

Online poker rooms offer different types of tournament play from one-on-one to large tournaments which could lead up to qualifying for a seat on the World Poker Tour. There are free, cash and points tournaments.

Online tournaments are very popular and convenient. Because of the popularity of online poker, several sites are offering Million Dollar online games. You can qualify for some of these games with as little as $1.00.

Most all poker rooms run tournaments for Texas Hold'em while some also have tournaments for Omaha Hold'em, Omaha Hi/Low, Five Card, and Seven Card Stud.

Types

Sit & Go - very popular single and multi-table tournaments - always available and fairly quick. Good starting place for players new to tournaments. They vary in buy-in amounts from as low as from one or two dollars to a thousand dollars. Normally seven to ten players at a table.

There are also "heads-up" games for just two players. Everyone starts with the same amount of chips with the top 3 to 5 players winning a cash award, only the winner in a heads-up game. There are some tournaments which qualify you for bigger tournaments if you place in the money. Players compete for one another's chips as the blinds and/or antes increase incrementally.

Single Table Sit & Go Tournaments - Single table poker tournaments for Texas Holdem, Omaha High, Omaha Hi/Lo and Seven Card Stud begin once registered players filled the table . All players start with an equal amount of chips and play until one player has won all the chips. Normally top three finishers receive pay outs.

Multi Table Sit & Go Tournament, players start with a fixed number of chips. Players at numerous tables compete for one another's chips as the blinds and/or antes increase incrementally. As players are eliminated, tables are "broken," meaning players are re-assigned with one another or to other tables, in order to keep tables full.

Eventually, the last few surviving players with chips are assigned to the final table, where the winner is the individual who wins all the chips from his or her opponents. Cash prizes are awarded to top finishers based on the number of registered tournament entries. Normally multi-table Sit & Go is two or three tables. Makes for tournament action in a shorter time span.

Regular Poker Tournaments - There is an unbelievable variety of full tournaments. Tournaments with as few as 25 players to over 2000 players. Buy-ins for as little as $1 to several hundred. Qualifying tournaments for seats in large tournaments and even tournaments such as World Poker Tour tournaments. You can have a great time in these games.

Satellites - A satellite is a smaller buy-in tournament in which the prize is an entry into a larger buy-in tournament. For example on some sites, if you won a $2 satellite tournament that had at least 10 entrants your prize would be a $20 entry into a $20 buy-in tournament.

Instead of distributing the $20 prize pool over the top 3 finishers as done in standard tournaments with 10 entrants the $20 prize is pooled and awarded to first place only. If 20 entrants, 2 $20 tournament buy-in entries would be awarded. Therefore, for this example, for every 10 entrants, 1 $20 tournament buy-in fee is awarded.

On a much larger scale, a $100 tournament with 50 entrants could win you a $5,000 tournament buy-in for a major World Poker Tour tournament event held in Las Vegas, Nevada. In addition to the $5,000 tournament buy-in fee, some sites will include additional cash and prizes to accommodate travel & hotel.

Free Roll - play-money tournaments, good practice to get accustom to tournament play. Some sites offer a small cash reward or seats to other tournaments to the winners.

Private Tournaments - some poker rooms offer the option of creating a private room with various options.