If you’re new to the game, you’re going to want to read our guide to poker tournaments for beginners.

Poker tournaments: a definition

Poker tournaments are games where the play continues until there is only one winner. Alternatively, you can play cash games that are ongoing games where players are free to come and go as they wish.

Another difference between cash games and tournaments is that in a cash game, your chips directly correspond to monetary amounts. However, in a tournament, your chips simply determine who wins the game.

What is a tournament buy-in?

A tournament buy-in is the amount it costs to play in a poker tournament. There is usually a fee added to the buy-in too. This is usually a percentage of the buy-in. The tournament fee goes directly to the casino or cardroom. When you enter a tournament, you get a set number of chips in exchange for your buy-in. You cannot cash out during a tournament, the only way you get a pay out is if you place in the tournament. The prize pool in the tournament is made up of all of everyone’s buy-ins added together.

Where can I find poker tournaments?

Poker tournaments are incredibly popular. There is scarcely a place that offers poker that doesn’t have a fine selection of poker tournaments. But the question really is, where do you want to play?

You can decide to rendezvous with the big boys at the WSOP or you can make a whole trip of it with a poker vacation. You can also keep it much more lowkey and host a poker night in your home, with your very own DIY tournament. Or, the easiest and perhaps our favorite option, is to play online.

There are lots of fantastic options for online poker rooms, but our favorite right now is bet365. Not only do they have a brilliant range of promotions, offers and tournaments, they’ve also got this amazing bet365 bonus code for when you sign up fresh.

And remember, wherever you play, it pays to look the part. Check out this poker dress code to see what we mean.

What are some of the different types of tournaments I can play at bet365?

Just for an example, we’re going to explore what kind of poker tournaments you might find at bet365. The first thing you’ve got to decide is if you want to play Texas Hold’em, Six Plus Hold’em or Omaha. Then you’re into formats.

You can choose either scheduled or sit & gos, where a tournament starts as soon as a set number of people have joined. Sit & gos are also popular among multi-tablers. Then you also need to choose your buy-in, which can start from nothing at all, when you’re looking at freerolls.

And take a look at the prizes offered too. Some of them will award tickets as prizes to bigger poker tournaments. These are called satellites. Meanwhile, others will have a guaranteed minimum prize pool. That means no matter how many people enter, a minimum level of prizes is going to be dished out.

Other tournament types include:

Learn more about poker tournaments

Poker tournaments for beginners is a huge topic, as you can imagine. So we don’t have time or enough word count to cover everything. But luckily, we’ve got a tonne of resources that you can use to brush up.

For beginners who want to know the lingo, take a look at this a-z of poker terminology. Then if you’re thinking in terms of strategy, here are some great videos, podcasts and books to focus your attention on. And for a little poker tournament escapism, we’d highly recommend kicking back with one of these poker movies or a casino movie.

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