Poker Tournament

All players enter a tournament for the same amount of money, called the buy-in. In addition, the Poker Room or casino takes out an entry fee from all players entering the tournament. If the buy-in is $100 the house might take an extra $10, which means that the actual amount paid by the player is $110. For a tournament with 100 players this gives a total prize pool of 100 x $100 = $10,000. The pay out structure depends on the tournament, but usually there is a prize for approximately every ten players. In this case, it might be 30% for first place followed by 20%, 13%, 10%, 7%, 6%, 5%, 4%, 3%, and 2% respectively, thus making it ten prizes in total.

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All players start out with an equal amount of chips and, as the tournament progresses, the stakes are typically raised every 15-60 minutes. The amount of chips players begin with, the stakes and the time periods determine whether it is a fast or slow tournament. Good players generally prefer slow tournaments where you start out with a lot of chips (as compared to the stakes) and where the time periods are long. This structure gives the better player a greater opportunity of outplaying their opponents before the stakes become so high that they are forced to "gamble" too much.

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If there are 100 players in the tournament they will usually start by playing ten handed at ten tables. As players go broke they are eliminated (unless it is a re-buy tournament, where a player has the option of buying in again during a specified time period). Once players are eliminated, other players are relocated as tables are broken-up and re-configured. For example, if there are ten players on one table and seven players on two other tables, two players from the ten-handed table may move to the seven-handed tables, thus making all three tables eight-handed. The tournament ends when all players except one has been eliminated and this one player has all the chips.

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