Online Poker Tournaments

Online poker tournaments are offered 24 hours a day seven days a week.  Buy ins and guaranteed prize money vary substantially.  Some tournaments have fewer than one hundred players while others have four to seven hundred.  Holden is offered the most, followed by Omaha and Stud.  The variations between tournaments is subject to which website you are looking at.  Some offer bounties when you knock a player out of the game.  Others allow entry fees to be paid in playing points instead of cash.  Playing points are awarded by the site based on hands played and the betting level of the game.  A common element of many site tournaments is rebuy of chips and an add-on period after the first hour of play.   Rebuys are allowed once the player’s chip total is below a fixed level.  Usually it is the level of chips each player gets when the game starts.

Online play is different than live tournament play in that you cannot see the other players or their reactions to the way the play of the hand sets up.   This eliminates reading the opponent or any tells they may have.  Players just need to trust their instincts and the value of the hands they are dealt.  Bluffing does go on as well as using large chip stacks as weapons.  This part of the game is much like that found in a live tournament.   Online players are making a name for themselves in TV tournaments.   They have learned to play with extreme aggression.  They are willing to go all in at the drop of a pair.  Older pros that learned their game in live situations have to adjust their game to these new players.  To some this all in betting at a drop of the hat places too much luck into who wins the game.  However you do see the better players repeatedly make the final table.

The real change that online tournaments introduced to all poker tournaments is the age of the younger players who have learned their skill well.   They play well as they have seen thousands of hands in a very short time. Playing time experience was a yearly deal in the old days.  That is not true now as players can book hours of play on the Internet. 

Online satellites have also allowed players who could not afford the entry fee to win their way into some of the bigger tournaments like the WSOP.  This accounts for some of the young players you see on TV playing at the final table.  It also lets the other players know that this satellite winner knows how to play.