Differences Between Casino Tournaments and Online Poker Tournaments

If you play at online casinos in Australia, you’ve likely run across a few pokies tournaments or blackjack tournaments. These events allow players to compete for substantial prizes with minimal investment.

We’ve often been asked by players the difference between casino and poker tournaments you see at online poker rooms. Besides the obvious difference in game type, there are several things that separate poker tournaments from casino tournaments. Let’s take a look at the differences.

Higher Buy-ins for Tournament Poker

Generally, you will pay higher buy-ins for online poker events than you will for pokies or video poker tournaments. While it is true that there are poker events with low buy-ins ranging from .50 to $5, the buy-ins also go up from there. For everyday events, you will see buy-ins ranging up to $500.

Granted, for many poker tournaments, you only have to pay a single entry fee to have a decent chance to win, especially smaller tournaments like Sit N’ Go tournaments. There are re-entry tournaments, but you won’t see too many people putting in 10, 20, or more entries to compete for the top prize like you will in a pokies tournament.

Poker Tournaments Take Less Time

Generally,  casino tournaments will take anywhere from a few days up to a month. The average is usually a week. For poker events, you are generally committing a few hours. At most, you will see them run over two days with a break between days.

Now, there is one thing to keep in mind. When you play a poker event, you must play it straight through from start to finish. You can’t play a few rounds, build up a score, and expect it to win for you. The object is to win all of the chips in the tournament, and that requires that you play through until the end.

Poker Events Generally Pay More Players

Many online casino tournaments pay about 50 players. Sometimes they will pay more, but 50 is the average. Online poker tournaments generally pay from 10 to 15% of the field. The larger the field, the more people get paid. If there are 3,000 people playing in a poker event, at least 300 people will get paid.

Granted, there are events that will pay fewer than 50 players, especially Sit N’ Go tournaments. Of course, these are much smaller fields than your standard multi-table poker games.

A New Poker Event is Always Starting

If you miss an upcoming tournament at a poker room, that’s OK because there’s always another event starting. For larger events, you will see them run several times each hour. The larger online poker sites may have a new tournament starting every minute.

Poker sites also have Sit N’ Go tournaments that begin as soon as the required number of players have registered. This means that an event can start at any time of the day.

Poker Tourneys Pay a LOT More

Poker tournaments pay out according to the number of players that register. If you have 500 players sign up at $10 each, you have a $5,000 prize pool. The larger the buy-in or the larger the player pool, the more money that goes to players.

For pokie and other casino game tournaments, the prize pool is generally static. If the prize pool is $3,000, it doesn’t matter if 30 or 5,000 players participate. The prize pool will not change.

For poker events, pay attention to any events offering Guarantees. These events will have a prize pool of no less than the established guarantee. That’s because the website can accurately predict how many people will show up and play at the event. This will help you pick the better events to play in a poker room.