With the surge in popularity of poker, there has also been a major increase in the online poker tournament types to choose from. Each has a unique structure, strategies that need to be employed and most importantly, playing in them gives participants the opportunity to win some great prizes any day of the week.

An example of the great prizes include tickets to the gambling world's most popular competitions, such as the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the World Poker Tour (WPT). Winning a satellite online poker tournament is how many finalists have gotten to such events in the first place.

In most events, 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. There are different online poker tournament types to choose from however:

Satellite tournaments

As explained above, a satellite is an online poker tournament offering winners seats to major live events instead of monetary compensation. The most popular are WSOP online satellite tournaments. Satellites largely serve as a promotional tool for poker rooms designed to attract players and 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 

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. An online poker tournament may allow re-buys for a pre-determined period of time after which it follows standard freezeout procedure. When the re-buy period comes to its end, 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 

Most online poker tournaments follow the winner-take-all structure. The best strategy to apply in winner-take-all is to be aggressive and attack the jackpot. Exploiting every possible edge in order to collect all the chips is the main goal.

Turbo

Turbo tournament feature blinds that escalate very rapidly. Somes have the blinds escalate as often as every five minutes. There is very little action after the flop because players either fold or go all-in preflop. Players who play passively during this type of online poker tournament will see their stack being eaten away very quickly.

Steps 

A steps tournament is actually a series of satellite tournaments featuring increasingly larger buy-ins. They typically culminate in impressive cash prizes at the final step of the competition. Poker rooms often allow players to buy-in at any of its steps. Naturally, the buy-in at the higher steps is much greater than at the lower steps.

Shootout 

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.