Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Why Poker Tournaments are So Profitable
Why Poker Tournaments are So Profitable When you buy into a poker tournament, you are given a set amount of tournament chips. For example, when you buy into a $10,000 tournament, you typically get 30,000 in chips. These chips can only be used in that tournament. You cannot cash them out for money. Everyone plays poker until one person has all the chips, which can take from a few hours to several days, depending on the structure of the tournament. The blinds are gradually increased to induce action, which reduces the field over time. For example, a tournament may start with 10,000 chips and 25/50 blinds but after a few hours, you may be playing 500/1,000 blinds, turning the event into a crapshoot. Once 90 percent or so of the players have been knocked out, prize money is paid to everyone once they lose their last chip, usually with the majority of the money going to the top three finishers. For example, in large tournaments with 10,000 people, 1,000 people will usually walk away with some money. Note that 1,000th place may get 0.02 percent of the prize pool, whereas first place might take 25 percent.
When I sit down to play a poker tournament,
When I sit down to play a poker tournament, my goal is to win. It is not to survive for a few hours or recover my buy-in. I play to win because most of the prize money goes to the top few finishers. All the biggest winners in tournament poker play to win. To win, you have to play an aggressive style of poker. If you are tight, you won’t make it.