The World Series of Poker main event or a World Poker Tour final table event or an EPT championship, these tournaments play until there is one winner. Those are “no deal” events. But in most smaller tournaments, particularly daily events in casinos and card rooms, deals are allowed. The card rooms recognize that the money in the prize pool belongs to the players and with no TV cameras running the house will allow deals.

In fact, card rooms encourage deals because the tournament ends and the dealers and floor staff are released to other duties. Often the house will help players with the amounts and even have a calculator handy to make the numbers easy to run.

So here are the basic rules for making a final table deal:

1) Everyone still in the event has got to agree to the deal, in fact, everyone has to agree to stop the tournament to even talk about a deal. One objection and the game plays on.

2) A deal may involve chip counts, negotiation and probably most importantly equity.

3) More players may be paid then the tournament prizepool lists, in other words if the tournament pays 9 that does not mean that players cannot make a deal to pay 10.

4) More than one deal can be made. Say you are down to five and make a deal. Once two players are eliminated the remaining three can “redeal” with the money remaining the the prize pool.

5) There are always opinions about what is fair and what is equitable. Don’t make a deal if you feel you are not getting the fair share but do ask the other players why they feel the proposed split is equitable.

6) If in doubt, play on.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #97

The average stack in a tournament is a very important number for you to keep track of when you venture into the tournament arena. Most poker players do not really understand the significance of the average stack.

Oh sure, everyone gets the math. If we take the total number of chips and divide by the number of remaining players…. that is the average stack. Right. Now, so what? Here is where players go wrong, they assume if they have the average stack then approximately half of the players still in the tournament have more chips than they do and about the same number of players have less chips. That is absolutely wrong!

Here is a rule you can take to the bank. When the tournament begins, all players have the same number of chips and that is the average stack; as soon as one hand has been played, there will be fewer players above average than below and the number of players below average will get larger the deeper we get into the tournament.

This is simply the math of a poker tournament. Large stacks tend to be way above average and to balance those large stacks (balancing = averaging) there will need to be several small stacks for every large stack. In a normal tournament by the half way point (when 50% of the starting players have busted out) the average stack will be larger than at least 60% of the remaining stacks and often that number is higher.

There are tournaments when the average stack actually begins to average out again and sometimes a final table begins with many nearly average stacks. But even in these instances, if you check back during the middle and late stages of the tournament, you will find many more small stacks than large ones.

The average stack is a good barometer for tournament players to shoot for because as long as you are average, you are ahead of the pack.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #96

A “clock watcher” on the job is just some nit who doesn’t want to work one minute more than his eight hours and has more interest in the second hand than the work he is paid to do. In a poker tournament, a clock watcher is a sophisticated player who knows that every piece of information can help your game.

All good card rooms use some kind of electronic clock usually a computer software program to keep track of the rounds in a poker tournament. But there is more to just counting down the minutes on a good tournament clock. Certainly, you want to know how long the current round will last because the blinds will be going up in the next round. The tournament clock will show the current blinds and the increased blinds in the next round. Since good players always know how their stack compares to the blind structure, using the clock allows you to anticipate your changing situation for the current and the next round of blinds.

Tournament clocks will also have the average stack and number of remaining players in the tournament. Remaining players allows you to know how close you are getting to the money and how soon another table will break. If you are playing 10 handed and there are 51 players remaining, you know there are six tables left but as soon as the next player goes out, the tables will be combined down to five.

Good tournament clocks will also have the payouts once they are calculated, these are useful figures to dream about while you wait for the next hand. What will you do when you win that first place money! You don’t need to be a clock watcher in tournament poker but you should use the information provided as it impacts your decisions at the table. Poker is a game of incomplete information, use what is given to you for free.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #95

Rebuy tournaments can be a lot of fun and very exciting; they can also be very expensive. It pays to understand not only the rules of the rebuy tournament but also the players you will be facing.

Basically, a rebuy tournament allows players to purchase additional chips during the early rounds of play. A common example would be a $100 buy-in, for which each player will begin the event with 2,000 chips. They rebuy rules state: “A player may purchase 2,000 chips at any time during the first three levels of the event. As long as they have at the time of the rebuy 2,000 chips or less in their stack, rebuys are $100.”

Many beginning players treat rebuy tournaments as a kind of “second chance” event. If you go broke in the first few rounds, you can just put up another entry fee and begin again. However, seasoned players may well have very different strategies. The first thing they will do is rebuy before the first hand of the tournament; notice the rebuy rule stated that you may rebuy if you have “2,000 chips or less”. Players want to have everyone at the table covered in case there is an early big hand.

Also many good rebuy players will play very loose starting hand standards during the rebuy period; they are looking to make a unsuspected hand and trap someone for a large pot. In fact, professional players talk about “seeding the table” by making multiple rebuys to get lots and lots of chips out during the early rounds, so they can win them back with a very loose, very aggressive style of play.

Let me repeat: Rebuys tournaments can be a lot of fun, they can also be very expensive. Understand this type of tournament, before you play. Wise advice at any time for any tournament but particularly true when you enter a rebuy event.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #94

While most poker tournaments as structured as freeze out events, there is another form of tournament called a shoot out. In the shoot out format, each starting table plays like a single table tournament, which is to say that each table plays to a single winner. Strategies for winning a shoot out can be very different than in a freeze out format. In a 300 player freeze out tournament you know you will have to place in the top 27, let’s say, to actually make the money. And in the top three to win a really substantial amount of money. So you are playing for a long term goal of placing high among the 300 entrants.

In a shoot out tournament you can only make the money by winning your first table, you must defeat the first 8 or 9 players you sit down with to move on. And you know to do that you are going to need to play some good short-handed poker very quickly because your table is going to have 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3-handed play and finally heads up poker.

The number of players is also critical in a shoot out tournament. The math of a shoot out format is calculated in reverse. If tournament organizers plan to have 9 players at the final table, then they need 9 tables in the prior round; one table winner for each seat at the final table. If those tables are also playing nine handed then the next prior round needs 81 tables. This is why you will often see shoot events played six handed. Six players at the final table, require 6 tables or 36 players in round two (6 X 6) and 36 tables and 216 (36 X 6) players in round one.

We often find players who are well practiced with single table satellites applying those skill to shoot out tournaments, which really is a series of 2 or 3 or 4 single table tournaments.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #93

The most common format for poker tournaments is the Freeze Out Tournament. There are three key elements to such a structure:

1) Players start with a specific amount of chips, usually the same number of chips for each player. There are some instances where players have participated in earlier events that can earn they extra starting chips but these are rare and usually casino promotions not open tournaments. All major events like the WSOP or WPT or EPT open events are freeze out tournaments.

2) By definition a freeze out tournament is one in which you cannot buy any additional chips by any means. No rebuys, no addons, no extra chips at all.

3) The tournament is played until one player has all the chips , that player is the winner and gets first place prize money. Other places may be paid based on the announced tournament prize pool.

In a freeze out tournament tables are broken down and players are combined onto other tables as players bust out of the event.

You may assume if a tournament is listed with just the words No Limit Hold’em or Omaha or nearly any other title and nothing else is specified that you are looking at a freeze out tournament.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #92

As we said in the last post, no one wants to finish on the bubble, just one place out of the money. Some players will stall to avoid that terrible spot. You see if you are a short stack then the longer it takes your table to complete a hand the more likely it will be that someone on another table will bust-out and you will creep into the money. Tournament directors have had to devise a way to stop this practice. What most rooms use is the practice of playing “Hand for Hand”.

When the tournament reaches the point where there are one (or in some cases two or three) more player(s) to bustout before the money, the tournament director will announce: “Dealers hold up after you complete this hand.” When all tables have finished their hand, the players are counted and the TD announces: “We are one player away from the money (or 2, 3, etc. whatever the house decides), we are now playing hand for hand.”

Each table then deals and plays only one hand and then players are recounted. Everyone in the tournament has to play one hand and then another until the bubble is burst. This means stalling does you no good. There is one issue with this method, what if you are one place away from the money and two players bust out. There are two way to handle this (ask which way the house does it, if you are short stacked). Either the player with the larger stack to begin the hand wins the money or the two players divide it.

Here’s hoping you get to play a lot of Hand-for-Hand situations.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #91

Suppose I told you that you had entered a 400 player poker tournament but finished out of the money. OK, it happens. What if I told you that they paid 36 places in this event and you finished 312th? So what, right? But what if I told you that paying those same 36 places you finished 37th. Ouch! Missing the money by one place is called finishing On the Bubble.

Now “bubbling” happens in every tournament, it has too. It isn’t fun, it is very frustrating but there are poker lessons to be learned about the bubble and about playing on the bubble. Play around the bubble can be very different then normal tournament play, the reason is that when we get near the bubble many players start to play very tight and very conservative. Not only do they not want to finish on the bubble, they want to make the money.

Some players will actually stop entering pots with a medium or large stack until the bubble is broken and they are in the money. This is a very passive play and generally a bad strategy if you are trying to win the tournament. You see with players getting super tight, a good player can steal blinds and antes with impunity from those players who have gone into a defensive “bubble shell”.

Most times the bubble player is a short-stacked player, who “had” to make a move with their small chip stack. One way to avoid that situation is to keep track of the aproaching bubble and take advantage of those players who are playing to “make the money.” Remember playing just to make the money is not a optimal strategy for winning the tournament or finishing in the top few prize positions. Keep playing hard right to the bubble is a much better poker strategy.

That being said, be careful right after the bubble pops! As soon as players are in the money there is often a “reverse bubble effect” and players who have been folding hand after hand will now start firing their chips into the pot. This is particularly true of players in the bottom third of the chip stack race. Now that they are in the money, they want to move up to a bigger payday but since they have a short stack compared to those on top, these players will often begin to take more chances with their chips. Be ready to grab those chips at risk but be careful of the free-for-all that sometimes develops right after the money bubble has burst.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #90

Yes tournament poker is a lot of fun but there is also the matter of actually winning some cash. The question is: How is the prize pool divided among the top finishers and how do the casinos determine how many places to pay?

The first thing you need to keep in mind when considering payouts for poker tournaments is that the payout structure is heavily top-end weighted. Most of the prize pool will be paid to the first two or three places in most events. Obviously there is some consideration given to the number of entrants and the more players entered, the more places that get paid out.

As a very general rule of thumb most big tournaments pay one table (8, 9 or 10 places) for every 100 players entered. You will often see the structure listed:

0-99 players 9 places paid

100-199 18 places paid etc.

However, in smaller tournaments run every day or every week by the same card room, there is sometimes a more liberal payout structure. Quite obviously you need to know how many places are paying in any tournament you enter.

Here is an example of a common payout structure used in many “tournament” card rooms:

Players 2-7 8-10 11-20 21-30 31-60 61-80 81+

1st place 100% 70% 50% 40% 34% 34% 34%

2nd place 30% 30% 30% 20% 17% 20%

3rd place 20% 20% 16% 13% 12%

4th place 10% 13% 10% 9%

5th place 10% 9% 7%

6th place 7% 7% 6%

7th place 6% 5%

8th place 4% 4%

9th place 3%

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #89

There is money to be won playing tournament poker. But before you win, you have to enter. So let’s talk about how entry fees are paid and divided in tournament poker. When you check on a tournament you are likely to see the event advertised like this;

No Limit Hold’em tournament $100 + $20. 1500 starting chips, 30 minute rounds.

We discussed chips and rounds in our last post. Let’s focus on the buy-ins. In this case the $100 + $20 means that $100 will go to the prize pool and $20 goes to the casino or card room. Most tournaments buy-ins are listed in this manner. Some casinos are now going to a flat rate tournament charge, for instance the World Series of Poker main event is now a $10,000 buy-in with no added charge. The WSOP charges 4% of the entire entry pool, so the prize pool is 96% or $9,600 of the $10,000. Either way you should know how much of your buy-in is going to the house.

Another tournament listing you might encounter might read:

Hold’em Tournament $80 + $10 + optional Dealer Bonus $5

Here, $80 to the prize pool, $10 to the house and an optional $5 that will go to the dealer’s. Now the key to such arrangements is how many chips you receive. If the $80 + $10 gives you 3,000 starting chips and the $5 dealer bonus gets you 2,000 more; then I think you can see that everyone is going to take pay the $5. Those 2,000 extra chips are just too cheap not to play. Think about that a moment. If $90 gets you 3,000 chips, then each of those chips costs 3 cents; the $5 dealer bonus gets you 2,000 more chips at a cost of one-quarter of a cent each.

Is this “dealer bonus” a gimmick? Yes it is and you will encounter various extra or bonus or special buy-ins in various poker rooms. All you need to know is how much these offers are how good the value is based on cost and added chips. What you need to know about the entire buy-in cost is simply, how much goes to the house and how much to the prize pool. Those numbers will help you evaluate and compare the various tournament offerings before you play.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #88