Texas Holdem

Texas Holdem is no wonder the most famous variant of Poker nowadays. Either in casinos or online casinos, it has always been what the players look after. Texas holdem is an easy game to learn and understand, but its hard to master.

Texas Holdem Tournaments

A texas holdem tournament is usually played when all player start with equal amount of chips, value of blind bests gradually grows throughout the tournament and players are gradually eliminated. Usually, the prize pool is heavily weighted to the top winners,but about ten percent of the entrants place in the money. Generally, standard texas holdem tournaments are played as freeze-outs, meaning, once a player runs out of chips, he cannot re-buy more and get back into the tournament.

Add-on and re-buy Texas Holdem tournaments

Re-buy and add-on Texas Holdem tournaments are very popular in many poker rooms. These tournaments allow eliminated players to buy back into the tournament (re-buy), or buy a certain amount of chips, when player’s stack dwindles to a low point (add-on). This amount is usually equal to the initial amount of chips pre-defined by tournament rules.

Usually, re-buy and add-on tournaments only allow re-buys for a certain period of time. When this period ends, the tournament continues in a freeze-out structure, but players are opt to add-on, meaning they can add a certain amount of chips to their stack for a set price. This amount of chips as well as its price depends on particular tournament rules, but Is usually equal to the starting amount of chips and at buy-in price of that tournament.

Turbo Texas Holdem Tournaments

Turbo tournaments is also known as speed tournaments meaning the blind bets rise very quickly. Usually the blinds rise every ten minutes, or even faster.

These tournaments are more luck dependent than typical Texas Holdem tournaments. The game usually ends preflop and rarely at the flop, because players tend to be forced to either go all-in preflop, or just fold. These tournaments generally require aggressive play, since huge blinds will quickly drain your stack, if you will keep to passive style of play. Try to steal the blinds a lot and hope to get lucky.

Satellite tournaments

Instead of a cash prize, satellite tournaments reward winning players with entries to higher buy-in tournaments.

Satellite tournaments is divided in several subgroups. Generally, most of them require aggressive strategy and style of play during early stages and more selectively aggressive play throughout middle stages and towards the end. That’s because there tends to be just few prizes awarded relative to the number of players who enter the tournament.

Steps tournaments

Step Texas Holdem Tournaments are brainchildren of Party Poker. It act as series of smaller single-table satellites of gradually growing buy-ins. The entire action culminates in huge cash prizes at the final stage.

Usually, the steps tournaments consist of five major stages. Winners of the first stage win an entry into the second stage, then compete to enter the third stage and so on. Generally, it is possible to buy-in at any particular stage of the tournament, but the buy-in at later stages is much more expensive than at the early stages. Nevertheless, major cash prizes are only awarded at the final stage of the tournament.

Shootout tournaments

Just like steps tournaments, shootout Texas Holdem tournaments consist of series of single-table tournaments. The only difference between these types of tournaments is that players don’t win seats to the same, or lower stages. A player either enters the next stage of the tournament, or leaves the table.

In shootouts, where several players are promoted to the next stage, a more selective- aggressive play is in order. You should keep a decent stack in order not to let your opponents knock you out. At the same time you must try avoiding most confrontations, since you want to enter the next stage with as less gambling as possible. A good strategy to build a decent stack is stealing the blinds.

Winner-takes-all tournaments

Many home Texas Holdem games are played as winner-takes-all. Since there are no second and third prizes in this type of tournaments, you have to be very aggressive. Your goal is to win all of your opponents’ chips, so you shouldn’t sacrifice any expected value just to stay in the tournament. Be aggressive, exploit every edge and go after those chips without any doubt. Finishing second out of ten is as bad as finishing tenth out of ten in this type of tournament, since there is only one winning place.