How to Play
Tournaments
Go from poker player to poker champion
Tournaments are where winning really pays off. A dash of skill and a bit of luck you can turn a small buy-in into a tidy amount of cash in just a couple of hours.
Plus, if you win one you get to call yourself a champion
Here’s how a poker tournament works:
Every player starts with the same amount of chips. Your goal is to win all the chips from the other players. Players who lose all of their chips are out of the tournament. As the tournament continues, more and more players are knocked out until there’s only one left:the tournament winner!
You don’t have to be the overall winner to get a prize, though – most tournaments pay out to everyone who finishes in the top 15%, or more.
There’s a bunch of different tournament types you can play at partypoker – you can find out more about them below. But of course, the best way to learn is to get stuck in and play!
Multi-table tournaments
This is the classic poker tournament format. A bunch of poker players – anything from a dozen up to many thousands – start playing across multiple tables. As players get knocked out, the tables are collapsed until you end up with one table left: the final table.
Sit & Go tournaments
A Sit & Go is a mini poker tournament with all the players at a set number of tables, usually a single table. That makes Sit & Go tournaments fast so you can fit in a quick game when you don’t have time for a full on tournament. And there’s no waiting around for a Sit & Go to start either – as soon as the table fills up, we shuffle up and deal!
Shootouts
In shootouts, each table is like a mini tournament in itself where you play down until there are 3 players left. Those 3 players will then move on to the next round – at a new full table – where they’ll play down to 3 again. It keeps going until there’s one table left. One of the perks of shootouts is that more places get paid.
1 on 1
Face your opponents one at a time in this twist on the tournament format.
Bounty tournaments
Knocking someone out of a tournament is always a guilty pleasure – one that’s even more rewarding in a bounty tournament. Every time you eliminate a player you’ll get an extra cash prize.
Please note that to win a bounty you must have all chips on the table covered for all players in the hand. If you cannot cover all the chips - and a side pot is created - the winner of the side pot will be awarded the bounty.
Rebuys
If you lose your chips in a rebuy tournament it’s no big deal – you can buy some more! With loads of extra chips in play, rebuy tournaments can pay out some huge prizes.
Tournament rules
On top of any rules relating to a particular tournament or promotion, we have a set of rules that applies to all our tournaments. It’s pretty boring stuff but if you need it, you can find it here.
Break time
Most of our tournaments go on a 5 minute break at 55 minutes past the hour. So if you’re playing more than one tournament at once they’ll all go on break at the same time, leaving you to grab a drink, get a bite to eat – or run to the bathroom!
Tournament alerts
Never miss a tournament again. The calendar in ‘My tournaments’ can send you pop ups and emails to make sure you’re at the table when the cards are dealt.
Making a deal
When a tournament reaches the final table the players can decide to divide up the prize pool there and then instead of playing on till the end – especially if it’s getting late. This is called making a deal.
If you want to make a deal you need to click ‘Yes’ next to ‘Make a deal’. If everyone else at the table is up for it you’ll be shown a special deal making chat window where you can agree on how much each player will get paid. If you don’t like the deal you can click ‘Exit’ and go back to playing poker.
Tournament Dollars
You can use T$ to buy-in to any real money or Sit & Go tournaments.
To check your T$ balance, go to the ‘My Overview’ page in your account.
Don’t have enough T$ to enter a tournament? The buy-in window of the tournament will show you how you can enter with a combination of T$ and cash. You can also choose whether to use T$ or cash first if both options are available.
Don’t forget, you can set up your preferred buy-in option for this in your ‘Options'.