Well step right up and enjoy the rollercoaster ride to fame, fortune and fun! But before sitting down at a table, please ask yourself a couple of simple questions:
Can I afford to play in this tournament? How long will it take and am I able to spare the time? What are my objectives and what are the goals and rules for this tournament?
If you know all the answers then you are ready to begin.
This is the age of the Internet - the information highway - and online poker is played at a very fast pace. Often you'll find that you get double the number of hands per hour than you get dealt in real life tournaments. You'll have to make your decisions a little quicker but there's still plenty of time to act.
But firstly a quick run down on the types of tournaments available.
Sit & Go Single Table Tournament - STT. These are single table tournaments where the winner takes home the prize but usually there is some kind of runner up or even third place consolation prize as well.
Multiple Table Tournament - MTT. These are more like regular tournaments where approximately the top ten percent of places win cash prizes with the prizes increasing as you get to the top of the prize ladder.
There are also Single Table Satellites and Multiple Table Super Satellites where the winners qualify to get into subsequent tournaments like MTTs. The difference here, however, is that in the Single Table Satellite only the winner goes through whilst in Multiple Table or Super Satellites there are a group of joint winners who go through to a future tournament.
Tournaments are then sub-divided into two basic types: Freezeouts and Re-buy tournaments.
In a Freezeout you cannot buy any more chips and when you go broke you have to leave the tournament. Re-buy tournaments allow you to purchase more chips during the early stages of a tournament but usually there are pre-qualifications, such as you have to have less than your starting stack amount or it has to be during the first three or four levels of a tournament. At the end of the re-buy period you are also allowed to Add-on to your chip stack by purchasing further chips. After this, the tournament proceeds in the same way as a freezeout. In other words, you play until you go broke so you had better look after your chips!
Hopefully this clears up the basic differences between the different types of tournaments. There are also differing types of poker, but the overwhelming majority offered today are No Limit Hold'em and this is the style of poker that shall be described here.