Both online and offline, it feels like flighted poker tournaments are becoming increasingly popular.
Sure you've got your quick and easy options like Twisters too, but these are pretty much the exact opposite.
They're one of those tournament types designed to take in a bucket load of players (and then some) and go on for quite some time.
If you want to know more about them, join us on our flighted poker tournaments fact finding mission!
At its essence, a flighted poker tournament is quite simple. It's a tournament that gives you multiple different options on when to start. This comes in the form of different Day 1s, usually Day 1A, Day 1B, etc. Or sometimes Flight A, Flight B, etc.
So after you compete in your Day 1, what happens? It's simple. The players who finish with the most chips in each Day 1 progress to Day 2. They take their chip stacks with them, so if you were bossing it in your Day 1, you take that stack with you. Similarly, if you were dwindling but just managed to make it into Day 2, you're not going to get a top up. Flighted poker tournaments aren't about clean slates!
When more and more people started flocking to live events like the legendary WSOP, capacity became more of an issue. In order to maximise the number of entrants that could take part in any given tournament, flighted poker tournaments were introduced.
This beefs up the prize pool and gives more people a shot at playing. Not too bad, right?
Like we said before, flighted poker tournaments have become synonymous with the world's biggest live events. And it doesn't get much bigger than the WSOP. There have been some gigantic flights over the years, but at the forefront of our minds are the WSOP Main Events (the 2023 event had a record-smashing $93,399,900 prize pool), meanwhile the 2019 WSOP Big 50 had a whopping 28,271 entries vying for a cool $5m guaranteed prize pool. And let's not forget the epic 2015 WSOP Colossus, which saw 22,374 entries from 98 different counties and $11,187,000 in prize money.
In order to run deep in flighted poker tournaments more often, you've got to make sure you adapt your playing style to suit the task at hand. For example, in the early stages, you're going to be facing a heck of a lot of players. So it's wise on your Day 1 to play a little more conservatively. Stick to big hands, get the lie of the land.
Then as a rule of thumb, you should start playing progressively more aggressively as the game progresses (that's a little tongue twister there for you, isn't it?). And if you make it deep, remember that people will all be on their guard as they approach the bubble too…
Obviously capacity isn't so much of an issue with online poker tournaments. As long as the technology is there, you can theoretically have a tournament involving thousands or even hundreds of thousands of players. But there are still flighted poker tournaments online in places like bet365 (here's a bet365 bonus code, by the way), William Hill, 888 and GG Poker. Why is that?
Well, because flighted poker tournaments also serve another important use. They let people enter the Day 1s when it suits them. So if there are more Day 1s, you're more likely to find a time/day that suits you.
Guys, we've got buckets of poker content for you. So why stop with these flighted tournament facts? Here are just a selection we reckon you could be very interested in…
Bet365 Poker Review » Instalments: €2.50 » Bonus Expiry: 60 days » Max Bonus: €365
888 Casino Review » Min Deposit £10 » Expires in 90 days » 30X wagering
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