Sexton Discusses Online Poker Tournaments

Tournament poker is the rave right now and that includes online poker. Players really enjoy competing in tournaments - and why not? They are fun, exciting, challenging, affordable, and potentially rewarding. Furthermore, online tournaments allow you to become a much more experienced player for when you do play brick-and-mortar tournaments.

Online poker is wonderful for introducing new players to the game. The reason is because online poker sites offer free play. This is where players can learn how to play a game, see how the betting works, and get a feel for poker. This is great - up to a point. Poker is a game designed to be played for "something." In poker, decisions should matter. The game is designed to reward good decisions and punish bad ones. Most people try to make decent decisions when they play for something, no matter how small the stakes. When playing for free, however, most players never fold (since it's more fun to play). My recommendation: Once you play for free and learn the rudiments of the game, try a small buy-in tournament. It is here that you will truly understand why poker is such an enjoyable game. Single-table tournaments are a good place to start. Here, you will be up against one table of players and you play until someone wins all the chips. The top three finishers are in the money. When playing tournaments, you will quickly learn the importance of survival and staying alive. You will also value decision-making and will begin to understand the real joy of poker - playing for something.

Most online sites offer some type of tournament action. PartyPoker.com is the industry leader (and the largest poker room in the world). Tournaments are very popular there and they offer around-the-clock action. Literally thousands of players are playing various tournaments on PartyPoker.com at all times. These include buy-ins of different denominations in a variety of games. The two major categories of online tournaments are sit-and-go and multitable. A sit-and-go means just that. As soon as all the players sit down, the tournament starts. The multitable tournaments (with much larger fields) have predetermined starting times. You can register for these well in advance of when the tournament actually starts and plan your schedule accordingly.

Choices are always available. If you have only a short amount of time, you might want to play a single-table tournament. If you want large prize pools, the multitable tournaments might be for you (where you invest a little but can win a lot). You can also qualify online for the mega-championship events you see on the World Poker Tour. Many are doing so, including the World Series of Poker champion the past two years. The flagship event of PartyPoker.com is the PartyPoker.com Million, a WPT event that you can qualify online to play in. (You win a luxurious cruise for two and the $10,000 entry fee.) The finals are held aboard ship and the prize pool for PPM IV in March 2005 will be around $7 million! You can qualify to play in this event for as little as $32. (And about 650 players will qualify this way.)

There are huge tournaments with big payouts available online now. PartyPoker.com has them on a regular basis. Once a month, for example, they have a $1 million-guaranteed tournament. The entry fee for this tournament is $640, but numerous small qualifying tournaments are available in which you can win your entry into that event. PartyPoker.com also offers a $250,000-guaranteed tournament every Sunday afternoon. For more details on these and other tournaments, go to www.partypoker.com and click on News and Events. As you can see, there are tremendous opportunities online, especially for tournament players. And once you start playing tournaments, you will love them. Try one - you'll see.