Games Played
Wile there are many different types of poker played at casinos tournament play is reserved to those that have a large number of followers. Tournament poker is usually reserved to: Texas Hold'em, Omaha, 7-card Stud and 5-card Stud.

Number of Players
Poker tournaments can have as few as 8 players to as many as 1500+ players. The larger tournaments consist of many tables each table having 8 to 10 players.

Basic Play
Players pay an entry fee (a fee charged by the house for hosting the tournament) and a buy-in fee (this is the core of the prize pool) in order to play. They are then assigned a seat and given tournament chips with witch to play.

The object of the tournament is to win all of the chips. All tournament players start out with the same quantity of chips to play with and all start playing at the same time. Players play until they lose all of their chips and are then removed from the table. The tournament continues non-stop, often for several hours, until only one person remains. As playing progresses the stakes rise making it more and more difficult for players to remain in the game.

Players are awarded prize money based on their finishing position in the tournament. The top finishers earn the most money with the 1st place winner usually receiving about 40% of the prize money, the 2nd place winner about 20% and so on. The number of winners and the size of the prize depend upon the game being played and the number of people playing.

Re-buys and Add-ons
In some tournaments players are given the option of buying more chips during the tournament:

The re-buy option allows players (at the start of the tournament) to purchase more chips when they run out. Some tournaments allow unlimited re-buys during the re-buy period of the tournament while others allow only a single re-buy.

The add-on option is similar to the re-buy option but is usually offered only once at the end of the re-buy period and can be used regardless of how many chips you have.

All proceeds from re-buys and add-ons are added to the prize pool.

Betting
Tournament betting is structured and the limits increase with each level (while every tournament is different the lower limit is in the $15 range while the upper limit is in the $2,000+ range). The changes in levels of play occur differently depending on the tournament some are timed while some increase the level after a set number of rounds are played.

Balancing and collapsing tables
Because larger tournaments have more than one table the number of players at each table will change as the tournament progresses and players are eliminated. For the game to be fair the number of players at each table should be the same so the organizers move players in an attempt to keep all the tables equally populated.

Balancing is the practice of moving players from full tables to less full tables when the difference is 3 or more players.

Collapsing tables is the practice of removing tables once there are enough empty spaces among the rest of the tables to do so. Thus with 10 player tables when there are 10 empty spaces the players from one table are moved to empty spaces and that table is taken out of play.

Tournament poker is an exciting, inexpensive and fun way to play poker. Your losses are limited to the buy-in fee and you have an outside chance to win a large prize. Try one to see if you agree.