Ever since its inception, the game of poker has developed multiple variants of tournament play. The different tournaments have different playing structures and are actually part of what makes the entire gaming experience so exciting. The gambling world's most popular competitions, such as the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the World Poker Tour (WPT) are based on tournament play. Interestingly enough, some online poker lovers believe that tournament play is the only way to play poker.

The traditional tournament structure has players launch the action with a standard number of chips. The blinds increase gradually and the players get eliminated one after the other. Players who manage to survive the longest possible time are the ones to collect a certain share of the prize pool. Only about 10% of the participants actually finish in the money. Once a player is out of chips, he may not return to the tournament (these are freezeouts).

While many poker lovers find the above described tournament structure the most enjoyable one, there are other tournament structures as well. Most poker tournaments kick off with all players receiving the same amount of chips and have play continue until one participant catches all of the tournament chips. Some tournaments have a spin on the traditional freezeout structure. Such tournaments may increase the blinds faster, feature re-buys as well as follow a winner-take-all structure.

Here goes a list of the most common poker tournaments:

Satellite tournaments. Satellites are online tournaments offering winners seats to major live events instead of monetary compensation. The most popular online satellite tournaments are WSOP satellites. Satellites largely serve as a promotional tool for poker rooms designed to attract players. Satellites are especially profitable for players who are anxious to take part in a prestigious live competition but can not afford to spend money on the expensive direct buy-in.

Re-buy & add-on tournaments. Re-buy tournaments enjoy tremendous popularity because they generate a lot of action by allowing players to by their way back into the tournament. Should a player get eliminated or have his stack dwindle to a low point, he can just purchase some additional chips and continue playing. A re-buy tournament will usually allow re-buys for a pre-determined period of time after which it becomes a standard freezeout tournament. When the re-buy period comes to its end, tournament participants have the option to add-on. For a set price, players are allowed to add a certain number of chips to their chip stack.

Winner-take-all tournaments. Most poker tournaments played at home follow the winner-take-all structure. Much like the name suggests, this kind of tournaments have one single winner who takes the entire pot. By the way, the best strategy to apply in a winner-take-all tournament is to be aggressive and attack the jackpot. Exploiting every possible edge in order to collect all the chips is the main goal.

Turbo tournaments. A turbo tournament is a tournament with blinds escalating very rapidly. Some turbo tournaments have the blinds escalate as often as every five minutes. This type of tournaments has a much higher luck factor than other tournaments. There is very little action after the flop because players either fold or go all-in preflop. Players who play passively during a turbo tournament will see their stack being eaten away very quickly.

Steps tournaments. A steps tournament is actually a series of satellite tournaments featuring increasingly larger buy-ins. A steps tournament typically culminates in impressive cash prizes at the final step of the competition. A steps tournament usually has five steps. Players who win the first step are offered an entry into the second step and so on. Poker rooms often allow players to buy into the tournament at any of its steps. Naturally, the buy-in at the higher steps is much greater than at the lower steps.

Shootout tournaments. Much like a steps tournament, a shootout is a series of single-table gaming events. Nevertheless, participants are never awarded seats to the same step. A player must either advance to the next round or leave the game. Furthermore, while a steps tournament usually has a fixed structure, shootout tournaments follow different ones. While some give away solely one seat to the next round per table, others award a number of seats. Nearly all shootouts, however, boast a flattened prize structure at the final table. This means that the tournament's prize pool is distributed widely among all final table participants.

In addition, to the tournament variants we have mentioned above, there also all types of tournament types created by people who play poker at home. However, these are considered the unofficial ones. No matter what poker variant you happen to prefer, we wish you Good Luck at the tables!