The World Poker Tour North American tournament will be held at the Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls this year, in fitting with the fact that it was a Canadian that won the tournament last year. Will they be able to defend the Canadian poker tour title? Or, will it be someone from another country taking the crown this time around?

If you want to try your hand, and maybe even have a shot at the title yourself, it is possible – over at 888.com/mapleleaf you can sign up to take part in a Freeroll tournament – if you’re one of the top 10 in that tournament then you will be invited to play in a Satellite tournament, for a place at the WPT qualifier tournament scheduled to be held on October 6th.

Maybe you don’t have time to play that many matches – if that’s the case, then you can skip the Freerolls, and pay a 1c entry fee to access the Satellite tournament directly.

You don’t have to go to a casino to enter the tournaments – they’re played using the Pacific Poker client, which you can install on your PC or Mac. So you can fight for a chance to enter the most prestigious tournament of all time, from the comfort of your own home.

Earning a place at the WPT won’t cost you a penny if you go the online casino route – there’s no buy-ins, and the tournaments are free to play. Plus, the prize if you win is worth $12,000 between entry fee and help with accomodation and travel.

Even if you don’t think you’re quite as good as the pro’s yet, you should give this a try – it’s your chance to get some practice in against people who are playing a serious game, and you never know, you could get lucky this time around.

* Play Less Hands (Common Sense Rule #1)

The less hands you play, the more money you keep. This doesn’t just go for tournaments but for poker in general. Play only the best possible hands you can! Meaning, only play the hands that will give you the best return on your investment. Duh!

* Use Your Mind (Common Sense Rule #2)

Think through every hand. The pro’s get to the final tournaments because they think through every hand and every move the person made. Think HARD! What hand do you think they have? What hand do you think they just made? Why are they betting this much? Are just a few examples of questions you should be asking yourself.

* Switch Up Your Play (Common Sense Rule #3)

Just Bluffed a big hand? Consider showing your bluffed hand to the table, then next time you have a huge hand bet really strong - you might get a few people who still think your bluffing! Alternate your play in a non-predictable manner but try to keep your betting rhythmic and predictable no matter what hand you have!

* Feel Out The Situation and Bluff HARD (C/S Rule #4)

Don’t bluff when you have Two Pair and a flush draw on the flop? No one betting, but you have position? Make a smart-bluff at the pot. Make a bet that you think that is big, but callable. Like you want someone to call you. If no one has anything watch them all fold like cowards.

Don’t be scared if you get a caller, REbluff him on the next card - IF you don’t think it helped him.

If that fails, don’t hesitate to fold

I am not a fan of tournament poker. Television has made tournament poker look glamorous- a competition where skill prevails. However, the truth of the matter is that luck plays a much larger factor in tournaments than ring games. Think about it this way: if you started with $2,000, what is the chance that you would end up with $2 million dollars before the night was over at a regular no-limit game? Zero. However, to win a tournament where each player has 2k starting chips and 1,000 people enter, you would need to win two million in chips to win the tournament. Not an easy feat to do unless lady luck truly smiled upon you that day!

In short, the reasons I prefer to make money at ring games rather than tournaments are:

1. I can consistently win at a ring game, whereas a tournament is feast or famine.
2. Luck plays a much smaller role in having a winning session at a ring game than at a tournament.
3. It is much easier to tell if you are a good ring game player than a good tournament player. Since the best tournament player can easily go ten sessions winning nothing, it is very difficult to tell if you are ‘doing the right thing.’

Nevertheless, I play tournaments because they are fun, and because I hope to make some money at them. Winning at tournaments still requires sound poker strategy, but emphasizes several factors more so than ring games:

1.

Your chips have a different relative value. In a standard poker game, you should view each dollar as having equal value. This is not the case in a tournament. When you start off with an initial thousand in chips, that thousand is worth a lot more than the next thousand you make. Since you cannot buy back in, you always need to have chips in order to survive. At the beginning of the tournament, you should be more reluctant to go all-in because even if you win you are not in much better of a position. However, later in the tournament you must gamble, or else you risk just losing by being blinded away.
2.

Domination plays a much bigger factor. Later in the tournament, the blinds will be so high that most players in contested hands will be all-in preflop. Thus, you want hands that dominate other hands. High pocket pairs are good because they dominate lower pocket pairs, and ace with a good kicker is a good hand because it dominates many other hands. Many players make the mistake of betting very hard with a low pocket pair such as 55. In truth, these low pockets are only good for stealing blinds. If someone calls you, you are at best a 50-50, while you are a 4.5:1 underdog if they have a higher pocket pair.

by Ian McIntosh

Freeroll poker tournaments are daily events that happen on a lot of the best online poker websites. Freerolls are much loved by the poker playing community as they offer the poker players the chance to win some real money without losing any. The entry to these freerolls is – as the name suggests – free and prize money can range from a few dollars for a placing to hundreds of dollars for winning the big freeroll Texas Holdem poker tournaments.

So why do the poker sites have freerolls? Is it because of their extremely generous nature and the fact that they make vast sums of money so they feel a moral obligation to give some of it back?

What do you think!

Continue reading »

The 2005 World Series of Poker event is scheduled to begin June 2, 2005 in Las Vegas and an estimated 7,000 players are expected to participate in the $10,000 buy-in, no-limit Texas Hold ‘em main event.

The event will be held at the Rio Hotel and Casino from June 3rd to July 15th, with the last two days taking place at Jack Binnions Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas.

The buy-ins for the 2005 WSOP events range from $1,000 to $10,000 and most of the final tables are taped and televised by ESPN.

Continue reading »

by Matthew Winnington

Tournaments are poker competitions where all of the players play at the same time and continue to play until only one player is left. Tournaments are fun to play in, have a low entry fees and offer a large prize pool to be won. For these reasons they are a very popular. They are inexpensive way for novice poker players to learn how to play the game, as well as a providing a place for more experienced players gain experience.

While there are many different types of poker games played at casinos and online rooms, tournament play is usually reserved for Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and 7-card Stud, because these games have a large following.

Poker tournaments can have as few as 6 players (single table tournaments) to thousands of players for larger events. Large tournaments consist of many tables, each table having 8 to 10 players. The tables are slowly removed from the tourney as players are eliminated, and players are balanced from table to table as needed. (These are known as multi-table tournaments). Finally all but the last table will be removed and these last 8 to 10 players play until only one of them remains.

Tournament Basics

To play in a tournament players have to pay two fees. They have to pay an entry fee to the poker room hosting the tournament to cover the expenses involved. This gives the player an assigned seat and a set quantity of tournament chips with which to play (these chips have no cash value). Players also pay a buy-in fee. The buy-in fee is held and paid out as prizes. The prize payout differs from tournament to tournament but typically it all goes to the few players fortunate enough to make the final table.

The object of a tournament is to win all of the chips. All tournament players start out with the same quantity of chips to play with and all start playing at the same time. Players play until they lose all of their chips and are then removed from the tournament. A tournament continues non-stop, often for several hours, until only one person remains. As playing progresses the stakes rise (Blinds are doubled on a timed interval), making it more and more difficult for players with short stacks to remain in the game.

Players are awarded prize money based on their finishing position in the tournament. The top finishers earn the most money with the 1st place winner usually receiving about 30% of the total prize money, the 2nd place winner about 20% and so on. The number of winners and the size of the payouts depend upon the rules for the tournament being played and the number of people playing.

Re-buys and Add-ons

Some poker tournaments allow players a re-buy option. This re-buy option allows players to purchase more chips if they run out of them at the start of the tournament. A player can purchase the same number of chips that he/she started the tournament with. Some poker tournaments allow unlimited re-buys during the first hour of play, while other tournaments allow only a single re-buy.

An add-on option is similar to the re-buy option. Add-ons differ in that they are usually only offered once at the end of the re-buy period and can be purchased regardless of how many chips you have. As the name implies these chips are added on to your stack of chips.

All proceeds from re-buys and add-ons are added to the prize pool less house fees (if applicable).

Betting

Tournament betting is structured with the betting limit increasing regularly. The changes in betting limits occur differently depending on the tournament; some are timed while some increase the limit after a set number of rounds are played.

Balancing and Collapsing Tables

Larger tournaments start out with more than one table, each having 8 to 10 players. As the tournament progresses players will be eliminated and the number of players at each table will not remain the same. For the tournament to be fair the number of players at each table should be the same, so the organizers move players from table to table in an attempt to keep all the tables equally populated.

Balancing is the practice of moving players from full tables to less full tables when the difference is 3 or more players.

Collapsing tables is the practice of removing tables once there are enough empty spaces among the rest of the tables to do so. Thus with 10 player tables when there are 10 empty spaces the players from one table are moved to empty spaces and that table is taken out of play.

About The Author
Matthew is a frequent player who offers reviews and shares his experiences playing poker online at PlayRealPokerOnline.

Source: ArticleCity