Poker tournaments have grown in popularity at an amazing rate over
the last couple of years. As a general rule, the best places to play
tournament poker are the larger poker rooms, because the smaller
poker sites generally don't have the volume to support a lot of
tournament play.
Whether you're looking at a single table
tournament or a multi table tournament, you need a certain number of
players in order to make the tournament worthwhile for both the
cardroom and the player. And with single table, or SnG (sit-and-go)
tournaments, you can't even start the tournament until the minimum
number of player sit down.
Best Sites for Multi Table Tournaments
Poker Stars and
Party Poker both have tremendous amounts of action at their
online tourneys. It doesn't really matter much what stakes you play,
these 2 sites are going to have something going on anytime you want
to play in a multi table tournament. They have multi-table tourney
action going on during peak hours, but they also have enough
interest in their tournaments that they have off-peak scheduled
tournaments too.
Close on their heels are
Paradise Poker and
Ultimate Bet, both of whom have significant action at their
multi table tournaments. Paradise Poker was the largest poker room
online for a long time and still has a loyal following. And Ultimate
Bet has worked hard to become one of the in-demand poker sites, and
they've focused hard on building up their tournament traffic.
Neither site comes close to Stars or Party in terms of multi table
volume, but they leave most other poker sites in the dust when it
comes to multi-table tournament volume.
Best Sites for SnG's (Sit
and Go) Tournaments
Party Poker is the undisputed SnG leader on the internet, and no
one ever has to wait more than a few seconds for a SnG to fill up
and start at Party.
Pokerstars and Ultimate Bet also have
significant amounts of single-table tournament action. In fact, they
offer
heads-up tournaments, which is one type of sit and go tournament
not available at Party Poker.
Freeroll Tournaments
The sites we recommended above are mostly aimed at serious
tournament players who play poker for money. If you're looking for
information about freeroll tournaments, we've put together a
separate guide for that here:
freeroll tournaments.
Other Sites for Tournament Poker
All poker websites offer tournaments now, but the length of time
that they take to fill up, and the number of players that sign up
for them, vary widely. There's not even a direct correlation between
the amount of traffic at the ring games and the tournaments. So
check them out for yourself and see if you're satisfied with the
tournament action there. But definitely consider signing up with one
of the sites we've recommended above if you're an online tournament
player; you won't regret any of those choices.
It's not enough to know where to play tournaments online; you
should also learn how to win poker tournaments online. Some of these
articles will help:
Texas Holdem SnG Strategy
Omaha/8 SnG Strategy
Omaha High SnG Strategy
David Sklansky's All In or Fold System for No Limit Holdem
Tournaments
Last updated on February 10, 2006.
