Where to Play' em: Online Poker Tournaments

Online poker tournaments are a common offering of many online poker rooms. Except in freeroll tournaments, joining online poker tournaments entails payment of entry fees and buy-ins.

Entrance fees are a cardroom's hosting charges. Buy-ins are what you pay for your seat in a poker tournament. Buy-ins, eventually, become part of the prize pool.

Structurally, there are as many types of online poker tournaments as there are types of poker. Online poker tournaments vary with regards to rules about re-buy, buy-in, entrance fees, and prize pools.

Offered by Party Poker, Speed tournament is an online poker tournament characterized by rapid increase of blind amounts.

An online poker tournament that permits players repurchasing of chips within a certain time frame is Re-buy Tournament. Rules in relation to number of re-purchases vary among online poker rooms offering such tournament.

Freeroll tournament allows a player to play poker charge-free.

The most common online poker tournament is Freezeout. Repurchases of chips are disallowed, so if a player losses all their chips, the player is automatically removed from the game.

Both Satellite and Qualifiers act as stepping stones or tickets to some major tournaments like the World Series of Poker. You have to win in these tournaments to be able to join the major tournaments. 2003 WSOP winner Chris Moneymaker won his spot in the WSOP this way. Chris Moneymaker brought home $2.5 million prize money.

In Shootout tournament, every table play acts a sort of qualifying round that concludes in one ultimate table game. The last table game is a gathering of all pre-final table winners. There must only be one winner per pre-finals table.

With Guaranteed tournament, prize pool is already fix to a certain amount. The number of buy-ins does not affect the size of the prize pool.

Online poker tournaments allow gamblers to play poker for real money from their homes. If one also wishes to practice play only, one can play in freeroll tournament. Online poker tournaments have smaller loss-risk. Blinds, antes, and bets are usually small than in wood-and-cement cardrooms.

Before joining an online poker tournament, better see what type of tournament one is enrolling in. Online poker tournaments are diverse, and there are variations in rules and structures among tournaments. Check also the entry fees, prize money, betting minimums, and buy-ins. Tournaments like Freezeout, Shootout, and the other tournaments mentioned above, differ with regards to how much you need to pay, and how much you can possibly win.