There’s nothing more exciting than entering a big tournament, especially when you eventually discover you’ve made it to the last table. However, finding the ideal tournament for your play-style, game, skill level or approach to competitive play means taking a lot of factors into account, so you don’t find yourself being booted out much sooner than you’d like.
Firstly, think about the level of skill required to enter the tournament you’re considering registering for. If it’s a low buy-in play money tournament, chances are people are playing because they want a longer game with a big pay-out, rather than something to pay off their mortgage with (though PokerSeeker strongly reinforces the fact that this is a rather silly idea, use your salary for your mortgage instead!). So if you’re not that confident with your cards yet, try starting small and see how you go.
This isn’t because you’ll do badly – anyone can have the perfect run of cards and win a huge amount of money just through the laws of probability alone. But this isn’t how tournaments work – think about starting small simply because if you’ve never played in a tournament before, you’ll soon discover that the play style and environment is vastly different to the one you’re used to at the table.
Talk the talk
If you’re commonly found at chatty tables full of poker fans who just love to trash talk, share tips or talk about their day at work, tournament behaviour’s going to feel about as talkative as a graveyard, so expect tumbleweeds rather than tumbling words spilling from the mouths of your opponents. Because of the way tournaments work (intense play and large pots, in addition to the common feature of an ever-increasing pair of blinds) people are far more focused, and this becomes less about social skills and more about poker skills.
Buy-in
The next key thing to watch out for is the requirements of getting into the tournament – don’t worry, those prices aren’t what each hand is likely to cost – a buy-in is simply a way of confirming you have enough funds to last more than a few hands (if you don’t bet like it’s going out of fashion, at least). But buy-ins can scale very quickly depending on how big the overall winner’s jackpot is, so be careful because you might find the barrier to entry isn’t skill-based, just chip-based.
Size matters
Lastly, if you’re looking for a tournament, take careful note of the number of players, as this will offer some indication of how long the tournament is likely to last – don’t start one on your lunch break, by any means. A six-to-eight person tournament lasts about as long as a normal session at a table, if not even less time given the “elimination” process in poker tournaments. However, 300 players? Clear out your schedule for the day, because this is a marathon undertaking.
So grab your cooler, some snacks, a comfy chair, and get your poker-hat on, because all you need now is to use our tips and tricks and you’re in. May you leave the tournament victorious.