Party Poker Tournaments

Poker Tournaments Are Certainly The Most Enjoyable Form Of Poker

Poker tournaments have always been the most popular form of poker.  A lot of people in fact have been introduced to online poker by watching big poker tournaments on T.V., such as the World Series of Poker, The World Poker Tour, or various other events that are showcased these days on television.  So when it comes to choosing a game to play online, they naturally gravitate towards tournaments.

There’s another big reason why tournaments are so popular, and that’s the sheer extra fun and excitement that’s involved.  In comparison to cash games, where you’re often out of hands and the action really doesn’t involve you, with tournaments every hand matters to your situation, whether you’re involved in the play or not.  It’s also a lot of fun to see yourself climb up the ladder, and also to watch others be eliminated, increasing your chances to get paid as each player drops out.

There’s also quite a bit more strategy involved in tournaments, given that the situations are often much more complex.  Do you play safe and try to move up that way, or do you play more aggressively and increase your chances while incurring more risk?  So all around, tournaments are a great choice, especially if you enjoy the thinking aspect of the game.  It’s not that cash games don’t involve thinking, but there’s more to sink your teeth into with tournaments.

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Which Poker Site You Play Tournaments At Definitely Matters

There is a lot to decide when it comes to which tournaments you will be selecting.  Will you play single table tournaments or multi table ones?  If you play single tables, will you play heads up, 6 handed, or 9 or 10 handed?  Will you play regular speed, turbo, or speed poker?  Will you play freeze outs or rebuy tournaments?  Do you prefer hold’em, or would you rather play stud or Omaha?  The list goes on and on in fact.

However, the most important decision by far that you’ll be making here is where to play your tournaments at.  There are two main factors that go into this.  The first one is the amount of tournament traffic that a poker site gets. You need to make sure that there are plenty of tournaments running in order to meet your needs.  You definitely don’t want to spend a lot of time waiting for one to start, as this time is wasted in addition to making your experience a lot more boring.  You come to a poker site wanting to play poker, and not to wait.  No one likes waiting, and while there’s always a little waiting involved where playing poker tournaments is concerned, the less the better.

Party Poker is the second busiest poker room on the internet in terms of both overall traffic and tournament players.  There’s a ton of people playing tournaments at Party at any time of the day or night.  This is important since you want to decide when you play, and if there isn’t enough action at the time of day you want to play at, then the poker site has failed to meet your needs.  At Party though there are literally thousands of tournament players online at any hour of the day, and more than enough to ensure that there will be plenty going on to make everyone happy.

The second factor, and the more important of the two for sure, is to make sure that your chosen poker site has easy competition at their tournaments.  A lot of players think this matters more with cash games then with tournaments, but the truth is, it matters just as much with tournaments.  You always want to be playing against fishier players and this always has a direct effect on your results.

At a fishy site like Party, you can have all sorts of bad players build your stack so that you have a great shot at making some real money.  At a tough site like Poker Stars or Full Tilt, you may end up being the fish even though you’re a pretty good player.  Going up against the best players on the internet isn’t a good plan though.

Your equity in the tournament, meaning your expected outcomes over time, are a direct reflection of your skill level versus the average skill level of your competitors.  In order to make a profit, your skills need to be higher than your opponents’ skills, and just being a little higher isn’t enough, as you need to make up for the fees before you can be profitable.  If your skill level, for instance, is just average, you will lose about $10 for every $100 in entry fees you pay.  If you are below average, you will lose this $10 plus the amount of the disadvantage.

However, unlike casino games, where the house makes a profit from your play and it’s impossible to beat the house, with poker, the house makes their money but you can also make money as well by being good enough.  Being good enough here is a relative thing, relative to how good your competitors are.  This is something that most poker players don’t understand properly though, and I’m constantly amazed at how little thought most of them tend to put into this.  So we want to play at the sites which have the worst players, and avoid the ones where the players are better.

If there is one cardinal rule to poker this is definitely it.  Even if you are the world’s best poker player, you will do a lot better playing against weaker players rather than stronger ones.  So I’m not just talking to newer or less experienced players here.  However, if you haven’t figured out the game enough to be profitable yet, and you’re losing money on balance right now, you may be thinking that this isn’t as important.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and proper site selection is even more important to you.

There’s only so much losing you can handle, and you’ll lose a lot more against better players, that’s for sure.  You wouldn’t believe how many players have gone from losers to winners instantly from going from a tougher poker site to win at to an easier one.  Maybe your skills aren’t really that impressive yet, but if so, your primary task right now needs to be to play against players who aren’t very good at the game, and then look to get better yourself with time and do even better.  If you don’t look to set yourself up right though then you’re asking to get beaten like a dog, and your wish will be granted.

Party Poker, on the other hand, not only has a ton of players, they have a ton of bad players.  You really need both these elements in your favor to be set up right, meaning that there needs to be both a lot of traffic and a lot of fish. I can tell you with certainty that not only does Party Poker have this combination, it is the only poker site in the world that offers both these necessary elements in such generous amounts.

There’s An Even Bigger Reason To Play Your Tournaments At Party Poker

Online poker sites are obviously businesses, and they make money from you playing there of course.  There are two main ways they do this.  With cash games, they take a percentage of every pot that a flop is seen at.  This is generally around 5%, although it does vary by poker site, the type of game, and the size of the stakes.  With tournaments, it’s generally about 10%, although with heads up sit n’go’s it’s usually half that.  Unless you play those though, you’re going to see about 10% of all the buy-ins you pay go to the poker site as their profit for hosting the tournaments.

Now, this is just the way it is, and poker sites have to make money, and they can’t just let you play tournaments for free.  However, this does have a big impact on your profits and a lot bigger one than most people suspect.  If you are a break even player beyond the fees, then you will lose $1 for every $10 that you plunk down.  If you beat the games by 10%, then you will just break even.  If you are behind by 10%, then you will lose that plus another 10%, so you lose $2 for every $10 you invest.

With this all explained, is it any wonder why so few players actually make money?  It’s estimated that only 1 player in 10 makes a profit over time at online poker, although if there were no fees to the poker room, 5 in 10 would make money. This in itself speaks very loudly about the effect that fees have on players’ outcomes.

However, what if you didn’t have to pay tournament fees at all?  So instead of only 1 in 10 making money, the 5 in 10 make a profit now?  So now, instead of just breaking even if you beat the games by 10%, you now put that 10% right into your pocket instead of in the pocket of the poker site?  Or, instead of losing 10% plus another 10% in fees, you just lost the 10% and thus don’t just bleed money while you’re learning?

Is this scenario a mere fantasy?  Well up until very recently it certainly was, and in fact was far too crazy for poker players even to dream about.  However, Party Poker had a dream, and they dreamt about their players not having to pay a cent to play in any of their tournaments.  They then made this dream a reality.  Needless to say, they are the only poker site that doesn’t charge for tournaments, as this is taking care of players in the extreme and in a way only Party would dare even consider, but they really wanted to set themselves apart from every other poker site, and with one stroke of their pen they definitely did that, big time.

I can’t even explain to you how big of a deal this is.  Consider this though.  I know some players who make a living playing tournaments, and due to the big volume of their play, they have special deals where they get about a quarter of their tournament fees refunded to them.  So it turns out that they are around break even with the fees taken out of their profits, so in other words the fees suck all the profits out of them.  However, they get a quarter of this back, and that’s enough for these guys to make a decent living playing this stuff.  If they got it all back, they would be making four times as much money.  Party Poker just doesn’t give it all back, they don’t even take it from you in the first place.  This is just crazy, but crazy good.

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Party Poker Also Offers A Very Wide Selection Of Tournaments

No matter what form of tournament you prefer, and no matter how small or big the stakes you like to play, Party Poker has seen to it that you are completely taken care of.  They also feature the most advanced and convenient filtering options available anywhere.  All you do is select from the drop down menus the type or types you are looking for, which can either be a specific type or a range, and boom, Party Poker instantly displays all the available tournaments right in front of you.  It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Just as important though is their having so many tournaments running at the same time that the selection of them is excellent.  At most poker sites, you can wait a long time for a tournament to open up at your chosen game and stakes. Party Poker doesn’t like you to have to wait though, and their sheer popularity along with their very well run site means that you won’t have any trouble finding what you want.

If you only have a little to spend, then they’ve got lots of tournaments where the buy in is very small.  If you like the bigger buy in tournaments, they have those too, right up to their $200,000 guaranteed tournament and their Summer Million, where players vie for a total prize pool of a million dollars.  If you ever imagined yourself playing at a World Poker Tour event, well Party Poker owns and operates the World Poker tour, so this is the place to play at if you want to win a seat to one of their big events.  You can even take a shot at this for as little as $1, with buy ins suited to every size of bankroll.

Tournament Types Available At Party Poker

For starters, there are three main choices where it comes to speed, which are standard, speed, and turbo.  Speed here refers to the speed at which the blinds escalate.  The slower they escalate, the longer the tournaments tend to be, and the more that skill factors into the outcome.  The faster speeds have luck factoring into things more, although skill is still a factor but less so, but they also get over quicker and thus you can play more of them per hour.  I know players who play for a living who prefer the slower speeds, and I also know quite a few who find that they do better at the faster speeds.  So it’s really all a matter of preference, but there’s lots of choice at each speed.

The next choice is whether you want to play sit n’go’s or regular tournaments.  The main difference is that sit n’go’s start once the seats are filled, where regular tournaments start at a scheduled time.  Sit n’go’s also tend to be of a shorter duration, and the shortest of them may only even take a few minutes, while regular tournaments tend to be longer, and many run over several hours.  Again, it’s what you prefer personally.

There are five types of sit n’go tournaments at Party Poker, which are 1 table, multi table, steps, qualifiers, and HellKat tournaments.  With the 1 table tournaments, you play against players at one table, with the prize money divided up among the top finishers.  Within the 1 table format, you can choose between full table, 6 handed, and heads up.

The multi table sit n’go’s are similar, only there are several tables, either 2, 3, or 5, and the tables become combined as players bust out, with the action playing down to where only one player is left standing, similar to what happens at regular tournaments.

Steps tournaments are a great addition to single table tournaments, where there are a total of six steps, each with their own buy in level.  Players can buy in at whatever step they want, and depending on the results, they either move up a step, stay on the same step, move down a step, or are out and have to buy in again.  When you finish in the money in Step 6, that’s where the big payday is.  You can really get a lot of bang for the buck with these, and in particular, smaller bankrolled players can take a shot at some real nice money.

Qualifiers are tournaments where the winners get a ticket to a bigger tournament, usually a large regular tournament.  This allows players to play in a lot bigger tournaments than they otherwise could afford to enter.  The HellKat format is a very interesting and fun one where it’s like a regular single table tournament, however there is a time limit involved.  This can either be a set time such as 10 or 15 minutes, or a similar time which is predetermined but the players don’t know how long it will last for.  So this adds some real excitement as players jockey to get into one of the 3 money positions and the action definitely gets fast and furious.  They don’t call these HellKats for nothing. No one else offers these by the way.

Buy in amounts at the sit n’go’s are $1, $3, $6, $11, $22, $33, $55, $109, $210, $310, $510, $1010, $2010, and $5010, so as you can see, they are set up to accommodate every size of bankroll from the smallest to the largest.  They also offer several variations of the most popular forms of poker, including fixed, pot limit, and no limit hold’em, seven card stud, hi/lo seven card stud, pot limit Omaha, hi/lo Omaha, and pot limit hi/lo Omaha.

Regular tournaments are scheduled throughout the day, and these include over $100,000 worth of freerolls every month.  They run separate regional freerolls , conveniently scheduled by time zones, and while you need to reside in a certain part of the world to be eligible, they run several a day for each region, to make sure that there is plenty for everyone.  Many though are available to players from any part of the world, and are called World Domination tournaments. If you like freerolls, then party Poker is definitely the place for you.

New players also receive free tickets to up to 9 special $1500 freerolls, which run weekly and are limited to players who have made their first deposit at Party Poker within the last 60 days.  So the fields are much smaller than you see at normal freerolls, meaning that your chances to win some good money are much higher than normal.  So these tournaments are certainly not to be missed.

There is a very wide variety of buy in amounts offered with the regular tournaments as well, ranging from just $1 and going all the way up to $800, with pretty much any amount in between being offered.  Unlike a lot of other poker sites, which have limited choices at the smaller buy in amounts, Party Poker offers tons of these so you don’t have to have a large bankroll to get in on a lot of action here, or have to wait hours for the next one in your preferred buy in range to be scheduled.  You can even use your Party Points to enter some pretty nice ones.

The prize money ranges from $50 with the smallest freeroll, right up to the $200,000 guaranteed tournament which runs every Sunday.  There is also a wide variety of formats with the regular tournaments as well, giving players the additional choice of speed and different formats.  You can also watch your progress on Party Poker’s Leaderboards, which not only is a lot of fun, but you can also win your share of the extra $40,000 in prize money that Party Poker gives away each month to its tournament participants.  So as you can see, there’s a ton of selection at Party Poker, and all you really need to do is decide what you want to play and they will have it available for you.

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In The End, It’s Not Even Close

Party Poker doesn’t just win the battle of the best places to play tournament on the internet, they win with a knockout in the first round.  Just the lack of tournament fees alone slay every other poker site out there.  When you add in their large traffic base and their fishiness, along with their excellent selection, and then add in all the other great reasons to play at Party Poker, they are way, way ahead of everyone else. This is tournament poker not only the way it should be, but beyond what anyone had even dreamed it could be.  Click on our link to experience this all for yourself.

  • The current time in Londen (UK) is: 25-05-2023 09:56
Game Type Start Buy-in Players Date/Time (London)
  • The current time in Londen (UK) is: 25-05-2023 09:56