A real or online poker tournament is actually a structured competition. Unlike standard online poker games, the goal in a tournament is not to win money from the bank, but to advance through the different stages of the tournament while accumulating the most chip – The player doesn’t have the option of quitting at any stage and cashing in, but is required to remain in the competition until the winners are decided.
There are different kinds of tournaments that I will not expand on here – but generally speaking, there are tournaments where players are weeded out in the course of the tournaments and are tournaments in which the players have the option of buying chips and reenter the game, but only up to a certain stage. The main advantage of such tournaments is that the winner can multiply his win. There are also private tournaments with a single table and some have multiple tables. Just like there are many different ways to play online poker, there are also many ways to arrange a tournament.
The tournaments that I do want to expand on are satellite tournaments and elite tournaments.
Satellite tournaments are basically a path to a more exclusive tournament that only a winner of a satellite tournament can participate in. An elite tournament is meant for stars, and is characterized by its fast rhythm and its betting amounts that can reach $120,000 per pot.
But before you decide to participate in such a tournament I strongly recommend that you enter Pokerstars – a site specializing in poker tournaments; it offers new tournaments every couple of hours, in dozens of different styles and thousands of different opponents.