Powerful Profits From Tournament Poker

By Victor H Royer

Adapt Your Poker Strategy For Tournaments—And Reap The Rewards!

When novices won the World Series of Poker in 2003 and 2004, the word was out: you didn't have to be a pro to take the big prizes from even the toughest poker tournaments. Casinos across the world pulled out slots and put in tables, and thousands of new tournaments have sprang up almost overnight on the Internet.

Victor H. Royer, world-renowned gambling columnist and author, can get your tournament game where it needs to be—whether you're an average player in a card room or a novice in front of your computer. Royer shows how the smart players learn to adapt their strategies to beat those who are still using older methods. Updated with the latest information, this book will teach you how to:

Bring your game up to tournament levels
Avoid common pitfalls of poker tournaments
Compete at poker tournament speeds
Find the best online tournaments and satellites
Play all forms of tournament poker, including H.O.R.S.E., Badugi, and Big O

If you're ready to step up to the tournament level, Powerful Profits from Tournament Poker is ready to take you there?and to show you how to win!

134,500 Words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Release date: May 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9780818407789

Victor H Royer

Victor H. Royer is the author of several major works on casino gambling, and is a syndicated columnist for national gaming magazines. His columns have appeared in Casino Magazine, Midwest Gaming and Travel, Casino Executive, Card Player, and many others. He has also served as a marketing and gaming consultant to the world's largest casinos, and to gaming machine manufacturers. He lives in Las Vegas.

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Preface

Powerful Profits from Tournament Poker is entirely about Texas Hold’Em because of its overwhelming popularity in poker tournaments worldwide. It is also the most common game you will find on the Internet, and even there it is the most popular game of choice by a very wide margin among all players of tournament poker. I am not going to teach you how to play poker in this book, because before you ever reached the decision to play in a poker tournament, you should already be at least a reasonably good player. Therefore, this book does not contain discussions of what are the better starting hands for Texas Hold’Em, or the principles of how to play the game. Furthermore, there are no discussions about games other than Texas Hold’Em. If you want to know more about other subjects, or about any of the other popular poker games that may still be part of major tournament schedules, I again refer you to my two previous poker books—Powerful Profits from Poker and Powerful Profits from Internet Poker—in which you will find complete selections of not only the starting hands for these popular games, including Texas Hold’Em, but also detailed discussions and descriptions of various aspects of playing those games, particularly Texas Hold’Em. In this book I am going to concentrate purely and only on principles of playing Texas Hold’Em as these apply only to poker tournaments.

When I began writing my new series of books about casino games in 2001, poker was still pretty much a game whose appeal was confined to those few who were basically part of the poker-playing community. The world of poker tournaments was even narrower, mostly consisting of a few daily tournaments in casinos in Las Vegas, and a few in the card rooms of California. About the only major tournament that there was remained only the WSOP, and even Internet tournaments were far from being popular because that technology—and its companion connectivity technology, particularly broadband—was still not yet widely available. Poker, and poker tournaments in particular, were simply not that popular. Even the major WSOP poker championship continued to have entries of around 300 to 500 or so players in the main event. By 2003 the main event of the WSOP championship attracted more than 800 players, which was considered astronomical. Although truly exceptional for that time, this was still mostly known only in the poker-playing community, with very few people outside of the community or that interest paying any particular attention to it. As we now know, all of that changed dramatically when newcomer Chris Moneymaker won the championship in 2003, and the $2.5 million prize that accompanied it. That event became worldwide news, not only because of Chris’s fortunate name, but also because he was the first player ever to gain entry to this championship event by winning an online qualifying event first. By winning the Internet poker satellite that bought him into this championship, Chris Moneymaker introduced the world to the WSOP and to the Internet and, more important, to tournament poker itself. The worldwide appeal of this event has already been widely publicized over the past several years, but its impact bears repeating, particularly when discussing poker tournaments.

What was even more fortunate was that Chris’s win coincided with the increased popularity and appeal of the WPT and their television broadcasts on Discovery’s Travel Channel. Although the fortunate convergence of these three coincidences has been widely acknowledged to date as the catalyst for the tremendous increase in poker popularity, Texas Hold’Em as a game, and poker tournaments, what has generally been omitted from such discussions is the lesser-known fact that around that same time many Internet poker sites went online and those that previously had been playing only for play money now began to offer real-money play as well as real-money Texas Hold’Em tournaments.

Suddenly, millions of people worldwide came to know not only the game of Texas Hold’Em but also the world of poker tournaments due to the exposure that the news of Chris Moneymaker’s win obtained in the major media. These players were suddenly able to immediately experience the game for themselves at the speed of a simple computer click. Even people who had previously never heard about poker or the game of Texas Hold’Em, or who had no other interest in poker or poker tournaments, now became fascinated with the story of Chris Moneymaker and the exploits of other well-known poker players who quickly became household names through the televised WPT tour and the many televised WSOP events presented by ESPN. As most of us now know, the effect of this was immediate. By the 2004 WSOP championship the main event boasted more than 2,500 entrants. When champion Greg Raymer revealed that he won his $5 million first prize as an Internet qualifier, that was a story that no one could resist and now the entire world took notice. The rest, as they say, is history and that is how we now find ourselves in the world where no limit Texas Hold’Em tournaments rule. Not only has this game become a staple of all poker tournaments, but it has fueled a substantial boom in poker everywhere, in limit formats as well as no-limit ring games with a variety of buy-ins, and a plethora of poker tournaments offered on a daily basis in just about every casino that has a poker room and in every card room casino that now exists.

These cumulative events that have spanned barely a few years have also entirely revised the poker industry in general, resulting in poker rooms opening in major casinos such as those found in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and the many tribal and riverboat casinos throughout the United States, and elsewhere in the world. Up until these events, the corporations that own the major casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City shied away from labor-intensive poker because the game took up so much casino space and provided such a small yield per square foot. Since most of the casinos are now owned by corporations whose executives are not gamblers, and certainly not poker players (with very few exceptions, such as Bobby Baldwin of the MGM/Mirage), casinos up until that time were closing poker rooms, not opening them. Slot machines made more money per square foot of floor space, and that was the mentality among the casino controllers who had little vision and even less understanding of what actually motivates a person to come to a gaming environment. What happened in these few years hit the casinos like a freight train and had the direct effect of causing such executives to reevaluate poker in general and finally come to realize that by offering poker, and in particular poker tournaments, they can bring tens of thousands, and even millions, of players into their casino properties. Poker players not only play poker, but they also play other games such as craps and blackjack. They patronize other amenities of the casino or card room—restaurants, buffets, shows, and other entertainment options. Poker players also bring significant others, visitors, or friends, all of whom will participate in some form of casino entertainment even if they themselves don’t play poker. Although this has always been the case, the casino executives have been slow to realize it. Actually, they didn’t believe it, because they were closing poker rooms as quickly as they could get the tables out and the slot machines in. Consequently, all of us who love poker, and tournament poker in particular, owe a sincere debt of gratitude to Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer, Steve Lipscomb and Lyle Berman of the WPT, ESPN and the WSOP, the Travel Channel, Card Player magazine, Poker Player newspaper, the many other publications that abound about casino games in poker, and the many innovators who have brought us Internet poker in its many forms. We all benefit from this and our world is better and richer for it.

Poker, particularly tournament poker, has grown by such leaps and bounds in just the past few years that initially there was a shortage of information about the game that had now become so popular. That game is no-limit Texas Hold’Em as played in tournaments. Between the mid-1970s and 2003 there were very few poker books to choose from that even discussed Texas Hold’Em, or any strategies of principles of playing poker tournaments. There was, of course, the great poker bible Super System by famed poker player and poker legend Doyle Brunson. There were also several books by other great authors, including poker’s perhaps greatest theorist David Sklansky. Since then, however, a great plethora of poker books have flooded the market, most notably a great many books by former poker champions, professional poker players, as well as those who have become poker personalities through their frequent appearances at televised poker events, or poker tournaments. Many of these books were written by great champions and great poker players, all of whom combined deserve not only our gratitude but also our appreciation. It is not my intent in this book, or any of my other books, to either compete with them or to somehow challenge them. I am instead writing what I think is valuable information that fills a gap between the expertise of great poker champions and the steps necessary to acquire such experience that will hopefully lead one to become such a champion.

Not all people are equally skilled at poker, and this also applies to the teaching of poker and the writing about poker tournaments. Many times I have observed a person whom I consider to be a champion with incredible skills creating what can only be described as brilliance in execution of their skills and abilities. When I have asked about how that was accomplished, I have often received an answer that was somewhat enigmatic. The answers were something like this: Well, I don’t exactly know how I do it, it just sort of happens. This is not an unusual concept, certainly not in psychology. Over many decades studies have shown successful people having difficulties trying to explain exactly what it is they did that made them so successful. The majority of the time those respondents were not able to specifically identify exactly how they did it, or what they did when they were doing it. It appears that there is something called innate skill that defies explanation or logic, or the abilities of the person possessing it to actually explain it. Something similar to that appears to be present in some of the books written by the great champions of poker, although I hasten to add that all such books are wonderful tools to help you in your endeavors, and I wish in no way to diminish their importance or impact. In fact, it has always been my position to encourage everyone to read as much as possible about casino games, and poker in general, and tournaments specifically, because I believe that it is the totality of the knowledge that you so acquire that will eventually converge to create within yourself that special individual who will become a successful and profitable tournament poker player. In this book I seek to bridge the gap between the assumption of knowledge and the desire to possess it, and thus take you on a journey that will enable you to acquire the knowledge and grasp its applicability to the realities of tournament poker as you will actually face them.

If you have read my other books, you know I often write about the enormous gap between the theory and reality, and between what is often regarded as knowledge already possessed by the reader, or abilities so anticipated, without regard to the actual realities of what that person will find when actually venturing into those very environments. I make no secret that I find great disparity not only between what is often taught academically, or theoretically, and the realities as they actually exist, but also between what is often the anticipation of understanding based upon a preset criteria or principles of explanation, and the actual usefulness of that to the real and true situations that the person learning from them will actually face. Although I consider it to be a very good idea to actually show examples, or specific hands as they might be played in a tournament, I think it is far more valuable to go through the steps and the processes involved in the decisions as they are faced through the understanding of the totality of the experience that will eventually lead to the insightful understanding of how to manage and navigate through your own particular steps and stages as you play such tournaments.

Simply put, the goal of winning the tournament is the desired outcome, but it is the process itself that provides the most useful knowledge and fruit not only to reach that goal this time, but to repeat it. It is the steps that you take, one at a time, and the considerations that apply to them as they are occurring, that in the end results in your acquiring the knowledge and experience required, as well as the practice of your skills as they apply to the transcendence of such knowledge into the actual doing of it, resulting in a strong step-by-step structure upon which you are then so able to build continuing success. As is the case with most things in life, even those who are merely lucky will succeed at some time. If you have watched poker tournaments you have seen many examples where players of dubious skills have continued to be lucky throughout the entire tournament and have either finished very high in the pay structure or have actually won the tournament. This is not unusual, because even though tournament poker is largely a game of very significant skill, there is also a luck factor involved and that is, unfortunately, inescapable. It is also fortunate, because it is precisely this factor of luck and the resultant companion fact that anybody can win, that actually continues to fuel the large fields that are entering modern-day poker tournaments. In the end, however, skill will prevail. Therefore, in order for you to acquire such skills in tournament poker in a useful and workable step-by-step manner, I have crafted this book as such a guide.

1

Introduction to Tournament Poker

This chapter is designed to showcase the simple basics of tournament poker. It is intended for the novice players, or for those less experienced in tournament poker. Although I assume that you already know how to play poker well, it is a fact that many poker players who already possess a good grasp of the game are nonetheless new to tournament poker. For those readers who already have the familiarity with the basics relevant to tournament poker, I recommend that you skip this chapter and begin instead with chapter 2, where I begin the more detailed and more relevant professional discussions of how to improve your performance in tournament poker.

GETTING STARTED—HOW TO FIND A TOURNAMENT

Assuming you know very little or practically nothing about poker tournaments, I will therefore start at the beginning. Again, if you are already familiar with this, you should skip this chapter and go directly to chapter 2. For those of you who wish to continue with these simple basics, following is a list of the kinds of poker tournaments you will encounter in the major events, such as the WPT and WSOP, and in many of the smaller venues and daily tournaments in your favorite casino poker room or card room:

• Multitable freezeout tournaments

• Multitable rebuy tournaments

• Single-table tournaments

• Limit structure tournaments

• No-limit tournaments

• Satellites

Before you can begin playing in any of the above-mentioned tournaments, you first have to find a tournament. Finding tournaments is not nearly as difficult now as it used to be. In the recent past, only some of the major tournaments such as the annual WSOP were available, and those were patronized mostly by professional or semiprofessional players. This is no longer the case. Today you can find poker tournaments played on a daily basis in just about every casino poker room or card room, with tournaments being offered not merely just once a month, or once a week, but every day and quite often several times over the period of the same day. Many casino poker rooms and card rooms now run tournaments on a twenty-four-hour basis, oftentimes in the single-table formats, where the only requirement is that at least ten players are present at the same time, and all of whom wish to play in such a tournament. However, the most common types of tournaments that you will find offered on such a daily basis are those that are scheduled tournaments whose times are posted in the card room itself and often publicized in the various advertisements in many of the poker-related magazines and publications. Therefore, to find a tournament in any real-world casino poker room or card room, go to that card room, telephone them, or look at the tournament grid published in just about every poker related magazine or newspaper.

You can also look online and check out the various tournament schedules on the website of the casino poker room or card room where you intend to play, or from the many sites that offer such information. This also applies to online poker rooms, because to find an online tournament is even easier. All you have to do is log on to the poker site where you wish to play and click on the tournaments tab, which will immediately display all of the tournaments at that Internet poker site, along with their scheduled times and dates. Naturally, for major poker tournaments such as the WPT or WSOP, or any of the other major tournaments now being offered, you can also look at those various websites, or check out the numerous corresponding advertisements. Consequently, finding a poker tournament is perhaps one of the easiest things you will have to do as you embark upon your tournament poker adventure. Of course once you get there, you will then be faced with the choice of which kind of tournament you wish to play. That’s where the aforementioned list becomes important, and I will now therefore briefly explain each of those items.

Multitable Freezeout Tournaments

Multitable freezeout tournaments are basically the kind of tournament you see on television. The word freezeout means that you can buy into this tournament only once, and that is with your original entry fee. For example, if the tournament is scheduled with a $100 buy-in for which you received, say, $1,000 in tournament chips, and you find yourself in a situation where you lose all of your tournament chips, this means you’re out of the tournament and no longer have an option to buy into that same tournament again. This is the direct opposite of rebuy tournaments, which I will discuss shortly, where during the rebuy period you actually do have an option to spend another $100 (using the same example) and in effect rebuy yourself into that same tournament while it is still in progress. This is not the case in the freezeout tournament. In such a tournament whenever you lose all your chips, that’s it, you’re done, and you’re out.

A multitable tournament simply means there is more than one table at which players are competing during the course of this same tournament. This differentiates this particular kind of tournament from those that are often called either one-table tournaments—usually Sit-&-Go tournaments—or those that are called satellites, which I will discuss shortly. Multitable tournaments are exactly the kind that you see on television, all of which are also freezeouts. In such tournaments there are usually many players competing for the same price pool, all playing together on many tables. That’s where the expression multitable comes from. As players are eliminated from such a tournament, short tables are broken up, players moved to other tables, and the number of tables continuously reduced until only one table is left, which then becomes known as the final table. When you see players playing at one table at the WPT or WSOP tournaments, this is what is called the final table, and you’ll often hear the commentators refer to such a table that way. This also means that those players are the only ones that have survived through the multitude of other players playing at those many tables and have now made it to this final stage of the tournament. It is from this final group of players that the winner will be determined.

Multitable Rebuy Tournaments

Multitable rebuy tournaments have the same structure as multitable freezeouts, but with one major exception. Rebuy tournaments usually offer a period of time, mostly during what is called the first stage of the tournament—known as the rebuy period—which is often equivalent to about one hour of play. During this time, any player who has fewer chips than he or she started with after first buying into the tournament can now rebuy again and receive either the equivalent amount of chips as those that were awarded with the initial buy-in, or whatever amount of chips that particular tournament structure allows for such rebuys. This usually means that if you run short on chips you can rebuy immediately and increase your chip stack during that rebuy period or, if you lose all of your chips, you can also rebuy and receive whatever amount of chips that particular tournament structure allows for you to receive with such additional purchases. For example, if you’re playing in a $100 buy-in tournament that also offers unlimited $100 rebuys during the rebuy period, which is usually a one-hour period but can be any length of time depending on the tournament structure, this means that for each additional $100 that you spend you will receive the stated amount of chips to continue in that tournament. This is the direct opposite to freezeout, because as long as you are playing in this tournament and are within the rebuy period and under the stated amount of tournament chips remaining, and are willing to continue to buy more chips, you will continually be allowed to do so until the expiration of such a rebuy period.

There are also rebuy tournaments that limit the number of rebuys to only one, or sometimes two, although one is the most common, and these tournaments are usually announced as one rebuy during the first period, or first hour of play. However, in order for you to be able to exercise this option to rebuy, you must have fewer chips than those with which you started. For example, if you’re playing in this $100 buy-in tournament with $100 rebuys and you receive an initial stack of $1,000 in tournament chips, you can only exercise your option to rebuy if you have less chips than the original $1,000 stack. Therefore, as long as you have fewer chips than the $1,000 with which you started, you can make a rebuy. Each time you rebuy, it will cost you another $100, or whatever the amount is for that particular tournament rebuy structure. But you can only rebuy as long as your chip stack is below the original amount—in this example the $1,000 in tournament chips with which you started at the initial buy-in.

Most players use the rebuy option either immediately after they have posted their first blinds, and thereby reduced their initial stack just sufficiently below in order to allow such a rebuy. Such players are of the opinion that they can double, or nearly double, their initial starting stack and as a result now have more chips than most of their opponents. This, they believe, allows them the advantageous option of adding more money in the early stages of the tournament than most of their opponents. By doing this, these players believe they can use the big-stack play (discussed later in this book) and muscle their opponents, or get all their chips in, in the event that they are facing an all-in situation, by having their opponents covered. Although such thinking does indeed have valid applications, particularly in later stages of tournaments, as I will discuss later on in this book in the chapters that deal with early, middle, and late stages of play, thinking this way during the early stages of the rebuy tournaments usually turns out to be costly, unnecessary if you are a good player, but mostly ineffective because the other players can also rebuy and thus you will not advance your cause very much because you will not be able to eliminate them. Most of the time, when playing in such rebuy tournaments, it is far more useful for you to manage your stack and play as if this were a freezeout. We will talk more about managing your chip stack and working your way through the early and volatile stages of poker tournaments a little bit later. Most people think that the advantage of rebuy tournaments, particularly multiple rebuy tournaments, is precisely in the fact that they can keep buying each time they lose their stack and therefore give themselves many more opportunities to make it into the middle stages after the rebuy period is over. Although this can sometimes work, as indeed was the case for famed poker player Daniel Negreanu in one of his famous wins at the WSOP in precisely such a multiple rebuy tournament, most of the time it is inadvisable for you to do so because it becomes prohibitively expensive and as a direct result diminishes your profit versus cost ratio.

Managing your way through tournaments and realizing profitable tournament success also means learning how to minimize your costs and exposure to expensive volatilities, and such are very present especially in multiple rebuy tournaments. This is not necessarily so in a single rebuy tournaments, were indeed it is to your advantage to rebuy immediately as soon as your initial starting stack is below the levels set to activate such a rebuy option. You should usually do this immediately after you have posted the first blinds, and assuming that you have not won the blinds at that particular stage but have lost either the small blind or the big blind, you now have a hair less than the amount of your initial starting stack and consequently are able to rebuy. In such situations simply consider the cost of the tournament to be not just the initial starting amount, but also the amount of that rebuy. For example, if you’re playing in a rebuy tournament that features only one rebuy during the first hour of play, or whatever that rebuy period may be based on the structure of that specific tournament, where your initial buy-in is, say, $100 with one $100 rebuy, you should in such circumstances consider the cost of this tournament to be a $200 buy-in. That will allow you to manage your money more efficiently and effectively. Consequently, you will better budget your costs, and will more effectively manage your early stage play. But if you are in a multiple rebuy tournament, you should almost never take advantage of such rebuys and instead play the entire tournament as if it were a freezeout, because it becomes extremely easy to play very loose during that rebuy period if you always have the option to buy yourself in again. When you make the first rebuy, you now have doubled the initial investment and as a result if you lose your chips again you are far more inclined to buy in one more time because you have already invested two buy-ins and therefore want to give yourself an additional chance to continue on in the tournament. This can easily lead to multiple rebuys, which will quickly snowball and can easily escalate to a point where your costs versus potential profitability become lopsided, and where you can easily find yourself reaching the second stage of the tournament after the rebuy period is over, and still on a short or medium stack, where you will now lose and be knocked out with no more opportunity to rebuy, having invested all that money for nothing.

This is the allure of such multiple rebuy tournaments, and that is the greatest mistake that many novice players make in being so seduced by this option to continuously contribute what may best be described as more dead money. Most players who do this have little or no chance of making it into the money rounds and that is why they are called dead money suppliers. Successful tournament players know that to succeed in such multiple rebuy tournaments they must either have the discipline to limit themselves to only one rebuy, and consequently play this multiple rebuy tournament as if it were only a single rebuy tournament, or to play it as if it were a freezeout. Playing such a tournament in this manner is a far more professional, disciplined, and responsible method of play that directly results in the minimizing of your exposure to costs while at the same time maximizing your profitability when you do in fact make it into the money. By so doing you will be among a few who take advantage of the dead money suppliers and become the fishermen instead of the fish.

In most rebuy tournaments, regardless of whether they are a limited rebuy tournament, such as one rebuy tournament, or multiple rebuy tournaments, there is usually another option offered that is called add-on. At the conclusion of the rebuy period, and regardless of your chip stack size at that point, every player still remaining in the tournament at that stage has the option to add more chips to their stacks by paying an additional fee, usually equivalent to the amount of the initial buy-in, which then gives them a specified additional amount of tournament chips. This add-on amount of additional tournament chips is usually equivalent to the amount that you will receive at the initial buy-in, but it may be different based upon the individual structure of whatever tournament you happen to be playing. If you are playing in a rebuy tournament, and hopefully are playing with the kind of professional discipline I have just described, then you should always take the opportunity to add on whenever it is offered. The only time you should decline this option of the add-on is if you had accumulated a substantial stack of chips and therefore find yourself among the leaders of this particular tournament. In that case, and usually in that case only, you should decline that option and not add on under those circumstances.

Under all other conditions, including having a merely medium-size stack, even when you have a medium-high stack, you should always take advantage of this add-on option. This is because after the add-on the tournament reaches the second stage where it now becomes a freezeout, and therefore it is now to your advantage to increase the size of your stack by any and all means possible. The add-on option is one such situation that can at this stage become advantageous to you. Therefore, if you have entered such rebuy tournaments with the discipline I mentioned earlier, you should also factor into your cost of the tournament the amount of this add-on. For example, if you’re playing in a $100 buy-in tournament, either with one rebuy or multiple rebuys, and you have the discipline to limit yourself to just one rebuy plus one add-on, then your total cost for this tournament should be factored at $300. By so doing you will give yourself all of the opportunities to advance within the tournament, exploit the dead money suppliers, and reach the money stages, while at the same time minimizing your exposure to cost volatilities. Being a successfully profitable tournament poker player requires the skills of actually playing the tournament with a solid grasp of personal and tournament discipline, and the ability to be able to calculate the costs versus profitability potential ratio. This is never more important than in rebuy tournaments, especially multiple rebuy tournaments, as well as those that offer add-on options.

Single-Table Tournaments

Single-table tournaments are just that, small tournaments consisting of only that one table and only those players that are able to be seated at that one table. For Texas Hold’Em tournaments this usually means ten players per table. Such tournaments are also often referred to as Sit & Go tournaments. You will find these tournaments very popular particularly in Internet poker rooms, where such tournaments are run 24/7 across a wide spectrum of games and limits. On the Internet, such tournaments can start in a matter of minutes, and the only requirement is that ten players be present and signed in. As soon as ten players have clicked on their seats in such online Sit & Go tournaments, that tournament will then start immediately. In the real world of poker rooms and card rooms, such single-table tournaments are far less common, unless they are satellites, which is discussed later in this chapter. Single-table tournaments are usually freezeouts only. On the Internet, they range from buy-ins as low as $5 to as much as that particular site cares to offer. In such Sit & Go tournaments, usually only the top three players share the prize. In the real world of casino poker rooms and card rooms one-table tournaments are almost unheard of, unless they are played in some of the very small card rooms or poker rooms where the poker room managers wish to offer their patrons the thrill of a poker tournament but do not have either the patronage or the facilities to offer more than one table. You can find such one-table tournaments among the small card rooms in midwestern United States, as well as in some of the smaller card rooms in California, including some of the very small poker rooms in casinos located off the Las Vegas strip and elsewhere in Nevada. Usually, however, such Sit & Go poker tournaments will be found mostly on Internet poker sites. I will have more to say about this in the section on Internet poker tournaments later on in this book.

Limit Structured Tournaments

In recent times the no-limit version of poker games, in particular tournaments, has basically overtaken all other forms of tournament poker. Although many ring games are usually played in the limit structured formats, most poker tournaments are now playing no limit Texas Hold’Em as a staple game. This applies not only to real-world poker tournaments, including the major tournaments such as WPT and WSOP, but also to the many tournaments found in regular daily offerings in many casino poker rooms and card rooms, and in Internet poker tournaments. Among the major land-based poker tournaments, the only ones that still have limit structured tournaments are the PartyPoker.com Million WPT tournament, which is actually held on a cruise ship. There are also some remaining WSOP limit Hold’Em events. Other than that, just about every tournament you will encounter will play the game of no limit Texas Hold’Em. What differentiates the limit structured tournaments from the no limit structured tournaments is that in the limit format your wagers are limited to specific amounts and usually no more than four raises. For example, the tournament may begin in the $10–$20 structure, which means that you can only bet $10 and $20 in respective rounds of betting, same as you would in the ring game. It also means that you will usually be limited to no more than four raises, again similar to a ring game. Moreover, the blinds will be commensurate with such limits. In a tournament featuring such limit structure the amount of these structured wagers will progressively increase with each round of the tournament. For example, after the $10–$20 period is over, the structure may increase to $15–$30. In the next stage, the structure may increase to $20–$40. And so on for each such increase in structures, depending on whatever the particular limit structure of that tournament may be. You can easily find out simply by asking for the tournament structure rules; these will explain exactly how long each limit will be played and what their relative increases in subsequent rounds of play will be.

No-Limit Structured Tournaments

The direct opposite of this are the no-limit structured tournaments. No-limit tournaments are just that, no limit, which means that there is no limit on the amount of money that you have to bet, or can bet. The only proviso is that you have to wager at least the amount of the big blind and raise by at least the amount of the raise you are facing, or the amount of wager you are facing. For example, if the blinds happen to be $100 and $200, your call has to be at least $200 and your raise has to be at least $400. If instead of being such an initial raiser yourself, and you are instead facing such a minimal raise, your call must be at least $400 and your raise, if you choose to raise, must be at least $800. Basically, all this means is that you must at least match the amount of the bet that was made, and raise by at least that equivalent amount. Other than that, there are no limits and that simply means that you can bet everything that you have in front of you at any time. For example, if someone raised that $200 big blind amount and made it $400 to go, which is a minimal raise for a no-limit game of this type at this stage, and you had at that point in the tournament $2,000 in tournament chips, you do not have to simply match that raise or only raise by the amount of the big blind, as would be the case in limit tournament structure. Instead, you can raise by any amount including up to the entire $2,000 that you happen to have in front of you at this particular stage of the tournament. This applies to any stage of the tournament and to any round of betting. That is what makes