Learn The Basics of Playing In Poker Tournaments at partypoker

In this section, we walk you through your first tournament, including:

• How tournaments work
• Time to rebuy?
• Prizes and deals
• Where to start

Before the tournament starts, all players pay an entry fee and buy-in. This gets you a number of chips and your seat at the table. From then on, it’s a simple knockout situation where you keep playing until your chips run out. The winner is the player who ends up holding all the chips.

To add to the atmosphere, the blinds usually get bigger by set amounts at specific times as the game goes on. In later rounds, there’s often an ante (a fixed bet everyone pays before the first deal) as well.

In some tournaments, once you lose all your starting chips, that’s it (we call it a freeze-out). More often, you’ll get a chance to top up your stack, or ‘rebuy’.

This could mean rebuying any amount of chips at any time or, depending on the rules, a limited amount and only at certain stages.

After the rebuys, there might also be an ‘add on’, where everyone has a chance top up their chips.

Should you do it? As always, it comes down to bankroll management, and the odds of winning versus the amount you’re putting at risk.

In any tournament, you’ll always know the prize pool in advance – which will help you work out if the money you’re putting in is worth it. Bear in mind that runners-up often get something too.

There can be quite a gap between first prize and fifth prize though. In which case, the final table will sometimes cut a deal to split the money. Result.

Ready for your first poker tournament? We say try a few low-cost Sit & Go tounaments before chasing the big prizes. Our page on Sit & Go tactics is a great place to start or for the seasoned player, you can visit our poker tournaments page to see the current Power Series tournaments going on at Partypoker!