Breaking Tournament Tables
In any poker tournament larger than one table there must be a way to combine the remaining participants as players bust out. In large multiple table tournaments this has to handled efficiently and continually during the course of the event. Breaking tables and moving players has become somewhat standardized for major poker tournaments but there are some aspects of the process players should be aware of.
First, it is always good to know when a tournament begins if you are at an early break table or a late breaking table. For instance if 50 tables are seated and you are at table #50, you would certainly want to know if tables are being broken by number. If you are the first table to break then you need not concentrate on getting good reads on your fellow tablemates as you will all be moved as soon as 10 players bustout. By the same reasoning if you are seated at what will be the eventual final table, you know you will not be moving for the entire tournament and valuable reads will become even more important.
Floor staff are usually able to tell you how tables will be broken and it is common for them to break from one end of the room towards the final table area. Be sure you know what the break order is. Now in all fairness, particularly in bigger multi-day events, the order may change during the play. The floor should inform players of those changes but that does not always happen.
Many large tournaments that begin a tournament 10 seated will at some point change to 9 handed play. When that happens, the chair of the busted player (#10) is simply pulled out and the players readjust themselves. When that happens it is a perfect time to recheck with the floor to see if the original break order for tables is still in place. If you make it known that such information is important to you, you will be much more likely to be heard by the floor and informed of any changes.
Discuss some of the intricacies of breaking tables in our online poker forum.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Forum Post #98
