The Variants of Tournament Poker

There are various forms of poker, but one of the most popular is the No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) multi-table tournament (MTT) format.

The reason this form of poker is so loved is that you can scoop huge awards for a fixed amount of money. For example, if you play in an online MTT, you easily pick up a first prize of over $10,000 playing in an $11-rebuy competition.

The popularity of MTT keeps spawning new and improved variants of the theme, and here are a few explained.

Heads-Up: Tournaments where poker players face off in one-on-one competition; the winner of each match moves into the next round in a manner similar to classic soccer knockout tournaments, such as the World Cup.

Mixed-Max: Mixed-max tournaments are held over several days, and a different format of poker is played each day.

The typical format will start with a day of full-ring nine-handed No-Limit Hold’em, followed by a second day of six-handed No-Limit Hold’em, before finally ending the tournament with a heads-up competition.

Re-Entry: These styles of tournaments allow you to bust out on Day 1, and then rebuy for the original stake on Day 2. Your classic second chance syndrome, created to build bigger prize pools.

Shootout: The Shootout format is a series of one table sit n’ gos, where the winner proceeds to the next round, and plays in another sit n go. This format continues until there is a final table.

Ante Only: Ante only tournaments do not have a small and big blind. Instead, all the players are forced to enter an ante and play in every pot. The ante increases just as the blinds would in a normal competition.

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