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Tournament Poker Sites
Pokerstars and Fulltilt are by far the best tournament poker sites. They have the largest player bases and you can find big poker tournaments starting around the clock. Below you will find descriptions of some of the different kinds of poker tournaments that you can find on these two sites as well as a few more.
Matrix Tournaments
If you like to play at multiple tables, you will love the matrix touranments. When you enter a matrix tournament, you will play against 9 players on 4 different tables. The big difference between this and a regular tournament is that you will play the same 9 players on 4 different tables. You will get paid based on how well you do at each table, but you can also get paid based on your overall performance.
Where to play Matrix Tournaments - You can only find these tournaments on the Full Tilt Poker Site.
Rebuy Tournament sites
You can find these tournaments at all of the poker sites that are listed here on Big Edge. Rebuy tournaments are not for the faint hearted poker player. If you lose your chips, you can always reload with more chips rather than get knocked out of the tournament. Play tends to be loose and aggressive early on in rebuy touranments, but a good streak of cards can give a poker player a very deep chip stack. These poker touraments also tend to have some very juicy prize pools, especially for those players who only buy in once or twice.
Poker sites with rebuy tournaments
Satellite Tournaments
Just like the step sit n go tournaments on Pokerstars, a satellite awards you a ticket into a larger event. You can go through multiple levels if you want to try and parlay a very small amount into something big. Pokerstars runs satellites into some fo the world's biggest poker tournaments, including the European Poker tour. Full Tilt also has a huge system of satellite tournaments. Full Tilt has run satellites into the WSOP, NBC's Poker After Dark, The Aussie Millions and lots of other big tournaments.
Some of the satellite tournaments are only open to members with a certain VIP status or players who have qualified in some other way. There are also some great bonuses available to players who are signing up for new accounts. You can read more here about Poker Bonus Reviews.
Shootout tournament Sites
You will find these tournament at both Fulltilt and Pokerstars. In a shootout tournament each table will paly down to 1 player. The tables will then consolidate and another round will begin. Most of these tournaments are 3-5 rounds.
Double or Nothing Sit n Go
This is a tournament structure that you will only find on Pokerstars. These tournaments use a payout structure where each player receives the same amount. Half of the players get paid in each sit n go and they will all double their money. It requires a little bit of a different strategy, but these games are gaining in popularity.
You can also find tournaments like this on some the other poker sites listed here like, however they are reffered to as double-up tournaments. These are held on the Cake Poker Network which includes Players Only and Cake Poker.
Step Tournaments
This is another tournament that is unique to the Pokerstars site. Players can use the step tournaments to try and turn a small buyin into a huge prize. Instead of winning money in step tournaments, you win a ticket to the next biggest step tournament. You can buy in at any level or take the cash equivelant of your ticket. You can also find variations of this type of tournament at most of the other big poker sites listed here.
Deep Stack Tournament Sites
In these tournaments, players will start with an increased starting chip stack. This gives players a little bit more freedom to play poker without worrying about getting knocked out of a tournament. Most of the larger buy-in tournaments are deep stacked, but there are also many smaller tournaments that start with deep stacks. On Full Tilt, you can even play in superstacked tournaments where your starting stack is 5000 chips; as opposed to 1,500 chips for a normal tournament, or 3,000 chips for a deepstacked tournament. Virtually all of the poker sites listed ehre on Big Edge Poker have deep stacked tournaments. You can view a larger list of site here; Poker Room Reviews
Shorthanded Tournament Poker Sites
This is a unique type of online poker tournament where tables are limited to either 6 or 4 players. You'll have to make some adjustments to your poker game if you are gonna sit at one of these tables. You will wind up playing more hands and you get to know each player at the table a little bit better. If you can't already tell, I'm a huge fan of shorthanded poker tournaments.
You can even play heads-up on most of these poker sites now. This means that you will be sitting down for a 1 on 1 match against another player. Full Tilt even gives you the option for a rematch against the same opponent.
Tubro Tournaments
Here's another tournament structure that you can find at all of the best online tournament poker sites like Pokerstars and full Tilt. These tournaments are designed for players who don't have the patience to sit around all day to try and win a poker tournament. The blind levels are usually 5 minutes long; half the time of the regular blind levels on most poker sites.
2X Turbo
These are fun tournaments that are usually held at the lower stake levels. They are a rebuy tournaments where the blind levels are decreased, but the rebuy period is increased. You will only find these tournaments on Pokerstars, so head over to their website to start playing; Pokerstars.
