Types of Poker Games

Types of Games: Cash or Ring Games

Players can choose whether they want to play cash games, either at full tables (nine or ten players) or at short tables (five or six players) and seven Heads-Up games (two players). The stakes which are normally displayed in the form of the size of the blinds will be as low as 0.01c/0.2c and may be eve as high as a $100/$200. If you feel that you are a decent player, our advice is to start at stakes of 0.25c/0.50c or 0.50c/$1. At these stakes your buy-in will be $50 or $100.

You may think that this game is too small for you to play in, we urge you to start off here as it will give you a reasonable indication of what you can accomplish on any given poker site.

Sit and Go Poker Tournaments

These are usually one-table tournaments which begin as soon as the field (of six or ten players) is complete. You can find Heads-Up games too, which only require two players to agree to play. The Poker site usually charges between 5 and 10 percent entry fees for these events, so if you enter a $30 Sit and Go event you will probably pay $33. For a Heads-Up event, you might only pay $31.50. Before entering a poker tournament this entry fee should be displayed on the poker site. Normally the prize money is distributed as follow:

Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs)

These events are sometimes called “Scheduled Tournaments”, usually offer fields of unlimited size and start at a pre-arranged time. Be aware of different time zones when signing up for events-8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time can be early morning in central Europe. By the way, if you sign on for an event but then decide, before it begins, that you don’t want to play in it, you will be able to sign yourself out again and the site will reimburse you all your entry fees.

The majority of MTTs offer a guaranteed prize pool, meaning that even if there are very few entrants, the casino promises to pay out a set of minimum prizes. If the field gets bigger than they expect, the overall prize pool will increase. As a rule of thumb, the top 10 percent of the field will get into the money, with the top 30 to 50 percent of the prize pool paid out to those players who reach the final table. Obviously it depends on the structure of the event, these MTTs can last anywhere from 2 to 3 hours, right up to 10 to 12 hours. However, if you make it that long, you will be able to earn so nice cash, so you probably won’t care that you’re tired, stiff and hungry!

For each of these styles of game, we’ll equip you with some key tips to get you started. However, in order to succeed you must study your game in detail.

Satellites

These events can take the form of either a Sit & Go tournament or an MTT. For usually a small entry fee, you play a tournament where the winner or leading players gains entry to a bigger event. For instance, if there is a monthly online MTT on the poker site your wagering at with a prize pool of $100,000-and usually there is-then the entry fee may be in excess of $200. If you cannot afford the entry fee, you can try to qualify via a satellite.

The site may offer a Sit & Go satellite where ten players each pay $20 (plus a $2 entry fee) to enter and the winner receives the $200 entry fee to the main event. There are even super satellites, where might pay $2 (plus a 20c entry fee) to enter a ten-player Sit & Go and the winner of this event wins a $20 entry fee to the standard satellite.

Players at times enter tiny online satellites for huge land-based Poker events, such as the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas. World Champion, Chris Moneymaker, proved it could be done in 2003, when he parlayed a $39 super satellite entry into the main event entry ($10,000) and then won the entire tournament-a title which paid him a handsome fee of $2.5 million dollars!