Poker Formats
In this article
- Poker Formats
- Cash Game
- Tournaments
There are basically two structures you can play any poker game: cash game or a tournament.
Overview Cash Game and Tournaments
| Cash Game | Tournament | |
| Buyin | variable | fix |
| Blinds | fixed | increasing |
| Start/End | variable | fixed |
| Table | Single Table | Single or Multitable |
Cash Game
The rules of a cash game are simple. You can sit down at the table anytime there's a free seat and you can put down any amount of money between a defined minimum and maximum. You can bring more cash to the table any time in between hands and you can cash out and leave the table whenever you want netting your wins or losses.
In a cash game the service provider (casino or online poker room) makes money buy taking a small percentage of the pots as a fee. This is called the „Rake”, raking rules differ at every provider but they are usually quite similar, significantly higher in live games than online.
Find enclosed our strategy offer in Cash Games
Poker Tournaments
A poker tournament is a form of game where each player pays a buy-in to get a chance at winning the pooled buy-ins. Each player gets the same number of chips in the beginning and is eliminated if he loses all his chips. Rebuy tournaments allow players to buy in again in the early phases of the tournaments.
The distribution of the prize money follows the placement of the players according to the order of their elimination. The particular payout structure determines which place gets how much. Obviously, non-monetary prizes can be used as well, like goods or placement in a further tournament.
Based on when tournaments begin we seperate the following categories:
Sit and Go
A sit and go (SNG) is a form of poker tournament that begins as soon as a pre-determined number of players has registered. This is in contrast to tournaments that start at a fixed time regardless of how many players have registered.
There are many forms of SNG, some with single tables and some with more, ranging from 2, 6, 10, 20, 50 or more participants and in all poker variants. The only thing they have in common is that they start once they have the necessary players.
The most popular form of tournaments are the single table tournaments with up to 10 entrants. The prize pool is usually distributed between the top 1-3 players but there are some formats, such as a Double or Nothing where the top half of the players double their money, the rest leave empty handed.
Multi Table Tournaments
Begins at a given time, such as 12:00. Late registrations are usually allowed in the beginning of the tournament. With many entrants there are almost infinite options to define the structure of a tournament.
While some smaller tournaments (usually up to 180-360 players) can run as SNG's, most MTT's are scheduled tournaments. As players start busting out there is a need to balance the number of players at the table to keep the conditions fair and of course keep the game running. In a tournament the service provider gets it's profit by adding a fee to the ticket price, which does not go into the prizepool. This is usually higher in live games than in online games
A common thing is that MTTs come with a Guaranteed Prize Pool which means that even if there are less players to put the prizepool together it will have a guaranteed minimum.
To make MTT's even more interesting there are always special rules that can apply
Freezeout
A freezeout tournament is the most common one, seating in these games is continuous, players are occasionally getting moved to maintain equal number of players at each table based on the table size the tournament runs with. In a tournament with 10 man tables it will be ensured that there are 9 or 10 players at every table all the time until the final tables are reached.
Shootout
A shooutout tournament can be considered as a series of single table torunaments, where there is no seating until every table has a winner, and the top finishers of each table are than seated together to play out the next round until the tournament is finished.
Rebuy
An interesting tournament is the rebuy tournament where players can rebuy themselves to the tournament after busting. There is always a limitation to this such as „only in the first two hours” or „only twice”. Rebuys usually come with a possibility to buy an add-on to increase your stack for everyone still in the tournament once the rebuy period ends.
There can also be knockout bounties which means a certain percentage of the prizepool is distributed as bounties that a player gets for knocking out another. In some tournaments only a few players, usually pro's have bounties on their heads, usually for promotional purposes.
As you see there are many options in tournaments, so whenever you play one always study the rules and prizes before as these all have an effect on your optimal strategy. Find enclosed our strategies for tournaments
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