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Poker Tournaments Basics: Main Types And Key Distinctions

Online poker players have two main types of game structures they can participate in. The first type of poker game is the most traditional one - the ring game. As its name suggest, this traditional poker game is played with the players sitting around one table, where they place their poker bets and raise the stakes. The second type of poker game structure is the poker tournament, where players have the possibility to play poker online at one or multiple tables and win various cash prizes playing poker online against poker players from various parts of the world.

If you are well acquainted with the traditional ring games, perhaps it is time to take your online poker game to the next level. Yet, before you sign up to play a poker tournament, know the differences between a traditional ring game and a tournament. First and foremost, all players who sign up to participate in a poker tournament will have to sign up in advance and pay an entrance fee, or buy in. Each of these online poker players will start the tournament with the same amount of chips, usually equal to the buy in fee. Most online casinos will require players to open a separate account for their poker tournament funds. Tournaments will usually imply that the blinds be increased at a predetermined time and rate, and the “all-in” option is usually different from the one that is usually used during ring games. The winners of the poker tournament are determined by their ranking in comparison to the other poker players.

Once you are aware of the differences between these two structures, you can go on to the next phase: Choosing a tournament of poker online. In order to make your choice at this stage, start with familiarizing yourself with the two major types of online poker tournaments: Single table tournaments (STT) and multi-table tournaments (MTT). In a STT the main goal is to be the last one standing. At this online poker tournament you play against other players around one table, with the most important factor being time: Players will be ranked by the amount of time they managed to stay at the game.

On the other hand, MTTs are composed by various poker tables slowly eliminated as the weakest players leave the game. The strongest players will eventually end up at the same table, and the winners are ranked by the time they managed to stay at the poker game.

These poker tournaments can be played at different speeds. William Hill Poker, the top-quality online poker room, offers poker players “Thunder Tournaments”, in which players are required to make their move in only 12 seconds, which adds excitement to the game. However, if a player needs to make a tricky decision, he can use a dose of additional time known as a “time bucket”. These online poker tournaments are very attractive due to their relatively small blinds, and players can sign up for these online poker tournaments, as well as many others, through the lobby of the William Hill Poker advanced software.

About the Author

Alexis Sloan is a professional casino player and reviewer. He has published many articles on online poker and other gambling-related matters.
For straight talking honest advice on online poker be sure to visit http://www.williamhillpoker.com/ for comprehensive reviews on the best poker online.

Using Poker Calculator Tools to Exchange Hand Histories

Your poker calculator may be collecting more information than you know, or even make use of. Other than the normal odds calculations, hand group rankings, and even bet or fold recommendations, hand history is something that a lot of users value most with poker assist software. This is especially true for cash game players.

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Hand history research can be a valuable analysis session for you – but of course – learning how to use it and taking that extra time to delve into your collection of hands is somewhat of a measurement of how much you really want to improve.

You can analyze hand histories in two ways. The first is using a program like poker-spy that collects all the bets, opponents, pots, position and results of every hand you play. It then saves them for you to analyze later in a myriad of grids and graphics that shows you in some quick easy steps your playing style and some weaknesses you may have in your game. This isn’t that new but poker-spy also keeps a running tally of the last 17 hands in a grid that also puts out alerts about you and your opponents.

If you use one of the more hard-core hand history analyzers like poker tracker, poker sharpener, or poker prospector, then hand history analysis takes on even deeper implications whereby you start to get a better look at your opponents play as well.

There is also the more difficult issue as identified by some of the major poker sites and their security protocols of hand history exchanging.

This is particularly problematic with Poker Tracker where a network of cash game players have built up a database of opponent playing profiles through their own table monitoring, then tabulate that data and make an exchange with another player. Suddenly someone’s hand history file can go from 20,000 hands to 50,000 entrapping that many more players while doing so.

Notwithstanding the fact that this type of activity is completely not allowed by Poker Stars and many other sites, it’s extremely difficult to police, so there is a huge policy challenge there for them.

Among the higher end cash game players this is a common practice, and some forums even have connection facilities to help with such exchanges. So if you are looking to exchange hand histories (files) with another player (computer), let it be known that you are surely entering the dark side, and may find yourself in murky circumstances. So be sure you can trust the source of a file exchange.

About the Author

Marty Smith has been a winning player online for more than 3 years now and has video reviews of all the online poker calculators so you can see them being used before you decide which one is right for you. He also has a tournament strategy video series that is free just for signing up.