by Jerry "Jet" Whittaker

May 28, 2007

Poker tournament

Poker is the popular card game in which players with fully or partially concealed cards make wager into a central pot. The pot is awarded to the player or players who make an uncalled bet. Poker has many variations, each following the same pattern of play. A poker tournament is a tournament in which the winners are decided by playing poker.

A typical tournament

A player pays a fixed entry fee, called as buy-in fees and receives in turn a certain quantity of in game, called play-money. Typically, the amount of play-money given is an integer multiple of buy-in. In most tournaments, the number of players at each table is kept by moving players, either by switching one player or taking an entire table out of play and distributing its players amongst the remaining tables. A few tournaments called as shoots-outs, do not do this. A play continues, in most tournaments, until all about one player is eliminated, though in some tournaments situations, especially informal ones, players have the option of ending by consensus. The tournament can be open or invitational. Multi-table tournament involve players playing simultaneously at dozens or even hundreds of tables. Satellite tournaments to high profile, expensive poker tournaments are the means of entering a major event without posting a significant sum of cash. The opposite of multi–table tournament is a single table tournament. Informal tournaments can be organized by group of friends, for example most colleges feature poker tournament. Casinos and online gaming site often offer daily tournaments. However, these are not only venues. Poker cruises offer tournaments at sea. Most 2005 and 2006 World Series of poker events took place in convention center at Rio hotel in Las Vegas.

Tournament venues

The 2005 World Series of Poker was first held outside of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, though the final days of the main event were held in the legendary Benny’s Bullpen. Future tournaments will be held at one of the Harrah’s Entertainment properties, 2005 saw the Rio as primary venue. The most publicized European tournaments is Poker Million, which began in 2000 on Shy Sports, following on from the success of Late Night Poker television show. 

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