Traditional land-based tournaments have always been favored by poker players, yet in recent years there is no doubt that the real poker action takes place in the online poker tournaments held by the variety of online poker rooms. Before you make your choice of an online poker tournament, it is important that you know everything there is to know about tournaments of poker online:

Just like in a regular poker tournament, all the players begin the poker game with the same amount of chips, and the game continues up until the point that only one poker player has remaining chips, the winner of the particular poker game and tournament.

In order to make sure that the poker tournament will be concluded after a reasonable amount of time, the antes or blinds are gradually incremented, making the poker players think twice before they continue.

Usually the winner does not take it all and the online poker room divides the prize pool between the top positions, and the winner gets to pick the biggest share.

Poker Tournaments can be about ten people in one table or thousands of players in multiple tables, they can be about Texas poker or 7 card stud but the types of poker tournaments are usually fixed and they are as follows:

Sit n’ Go Tournaments: These tournaments of poker online, as their name implies, begin as soon as enough players, usually 9 or 10, have assembled around the table.

Multi-Table Tournaments (MTT): These poker tournaments are scheduled for a predetermined time and involve hundreds and sometimes thousands of people playing Texas Holdem or Omaha poker at various tables.

Knockout Tournaments: This type of poker involves two online poker players with the same amount of chips. The one who cleans out the other’s poker chips will be the winner.

Satellites: This poker tournament is different from the rest in that the first prize is not only money, but a buy-in to another poker tournament. This prize usually includes a package of plain ticket, hotel and spending money besides the desired buy-in to that poker tournament. The idea behind this type of tournaments is to give good players the chance to participate in a big poker tournament which they probably cannot afford otherwise.

Re-Buys: Once your chips run out in this kind of poker tournament, you can purchase more chips. You can make a limited or unlimited number of purchases depending on the establishment or online poker room you play in.

Freezeouts: Once your chips run out in this type of poker tournament, you have no choice but to withdraw from the race to the prizes since no re-buys are allowed here.

Now that you are familiar with the different types of online poker tournaments, keep in mind two very important things:

First, avoid risky calls. Think about every bet you make while you play poker. Don’t forget that if you move to quickly you might find yourself out of the tournament. Be patient and make your moves wisely, it’s worth it in the long run.

Second, don’t waste all your money in the first few rounds of the poker tournament. Keep a tight control on your budget, and on the rising blinds. Keep your bets relative to the rise of the tournaments: low blinds – low bets and vice versa.

By: Josh Andrews

Though not exactly about tips on playing poker, Maverick shows the whole picture of the adventurous life of a gambler in the old days in the West. This movie was released in the mid 90s, 1994 to be exact. As opposed to the past two movies we have featured, this one is not all that serious. In fact, Maverick is a comedy and Western movie combined. It has Mel Gibson in it as the lead guy.

Mel Gibson plays Bret Maverick (of course). His goal is to somehow come up with $25,000 so that he can enter a five-card draw poker tournament. For those who want to refresh their memories, five-card draw poker is where each player around the table gets 5 cards. You then have to come up with the best hand possible by trading in some of the cards. Five-draw poker can be played with 2 to 8 players around the table.

The poker action is mostly seen at the latter part of the movie when Maverick makes it to the poker tournament. The tournament starts off with smaller tables of 4 players each. The winner for each table then would move on to the finals where the rule was to “play until you drop.” The movie shows how hard they were on cheaters back then. As the tournament was played on a riverboat, any cheaters were thrown overboard. This scenario – riverboat gambling, that is – is what some operators are trying to project even today. Though riverboat gambling is not at all that big a thing these days, there are still short gambling cruises offered in the US. The movie ends with… ok, I decided not to write any spoilers in case some people haven’t watched Maverick yet. It’s suffice to say that the ending made allusions to a probable sequel. To date, however, one has not been made.

The movie is not without other stars. It in fact features Danny Glover – who as we all know, co-starred with Gibson in his Lethal Weapon series. There were obvious references to the movie in fact. Maverick also boasts of having Jodie Foster in the line up.

Some trivia about the movie from Wikipedia:

* The Commodore states that he has “two small pair, eights and eights” as a way of deceiving his oppponents at the table (Maverick and Angel), but it has been common in poker for cards to “call themselves,” meaning that so long as a player lays all his final cards face up on the table, the player’s best possible hand will be recognized.

* The poker tournament scenes feature many familiar faces, either from appearances in western movies and television programs, or from careers in country music. These include (in no particular order) Johnny Cash, Carlene Carter, Waylon Jennings, Kathy Mattea, Denver Pyle, Vince Gill, James Drury, Clint Black, Dub Taylor, and others.

* The scene with Danny Glover, Gibson’s co-star on the Lethal Weapon film series, also includes a strain of the ‘Lethal Weapon’ theme plays as they lock eyes.

* Margot Kidder, has a small role as a woman that lost her wedding suit and asks Maverick and friends to recover it. She worked with director Richard Donner in the 1978 film Superman.

By: Paul Graham

Everest poker does not belong to any poker network and still it is one of the biggest poker rooms around. At peak times you can find up to 4000-5000 players participating at the cash game tables. Now you can join too with a special Everest poker bonus code.

This poker site experienced a big growth last year and is currently the forth largest poker room on the market. The software is quite colorful and the software is available in many languages: 16 languages to be exactly which makes this poker room a multi-national poker room.

In order to be allowed to play in the freerolls on everest all you have to do is to register with a real money account. Registering doesn’t cost money, you do not even need a credit card and you do not need to deposit if you do not want to. Should you decide to deposit money there do not forget to use the special Everest poker bonus code. First depositors also qualify automatically for the $1000 first depositors’ freeroll.

They offer a great “build your bankroll” program which will be of interest to all new poker players out there. This poker room offer most games: Texas hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 card stud. Everest poker not only a great poker room for cash games but it is also great if you like poker tournaments. There are plenty of weak players around so wining may be not that hard as on other poker rooms.

In conclusion Everest has fast and secure poker software with great graphics offering good poker action 24/7. You can play either free or you can deposit if you want using the special Everest poker bonus code. 

By: Robert Szury