Poker Tournaments & Games
Alongside the new events, the way fans watch this summer’s WSOP is set for a major shake-up, with a free daily livestream available to an international audience on the WSOP’s YouTube channel. Few expect the months-long gap that was a hallmark of the November Nine era; however, there is no doubt that any meaningful pause marks a big shake-up for 2026, and one that will surely spark debate among players and fans. “This summer’s World Series of Poker promises more action and more opportunities to play your favorite events than ever before, from the first ‘Shuffle Up and Deal! Win enough TPs so you can buy into any of the big ClubWPT featured events by playing in our daily Bankroll Builder
WSOP 2026: Lucas Jumalon Builds Huge Lead for Main Event Final Table
The CoinMillion is CoinPoker’s flagship monthly tournament, featuring a $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool on the first Sunday of every month. Earn Medals, climb the rankings, play for millions in prizes, and become one of the Global Online Poker Champions. A packed daily MTT schedule runs 24/7, but we also host multi-million dollar tournament series throughout the year.
In the end, all 48 seats were filled, resulting in a first prize of $18.3 million. Among those who committed early to the event were Johnny Chan, Daniel Negreanu, Jonathan Duhamel, Tom Dwan, Laliberté, billionaire businessman Phil Ruffin and Erik Seidel. By early December 2011, the field size had increased to 22, the minimum required for an official bracelet tournament. At the time of the original announcement, 15 of the maximum 48 seats had been taken. On June 2, 2011, the World Series of Poker and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté announced plans for an officially sanctioned special fundraising event, known as The Big One for One Drop, starting on July 1, 2012, with a record US$1 million entry fee. The 2023 Main Event took the record for entries, first-place prize, and prize pool.
In December 2014, World Poker Tour announced an alliance with Ourgame, agreeing to license products and services on an exclusive basis in more than a dozen countries across Asia. While the champions of the first six seasons did not initially receive bracelets, they were awarded them at a special event at the Bellagio in Las Vegas on April 21, 2008. These quick tips come straight from our full tournament strategy guide.
During the tournament, blind levels increase at regular intervals, such as every 10 minutes online or every 30 minutes in live tournaments. The best way to practice tournaments is to actually play – good luck at the tables! Guaranteed tournaments or tournaments with a large number of runners tend to have the best expectation for a skilled player. If you’re looking to make a profit playing tournaments, you should pay extra attention to the prize pool. Large field MTTs can sometimes take hours to complete, so make sure you have a schedule that suits the tournaments you decide to play.
DeepStack Showdown Poker Series events run from one to two weeks at a time. The National Heads-Up Poker Championship is 64 players compete in heads-up matches single elimination style to determine a winner. The main live poker tournament in Africa is the All Africa Poker Tournament hosted by the Piggs Peak Casino in Piggs Peak, Swaziland. The stakes of each round, as well as blinds, bring-ins, and antes as appropriate per game, typically escalate according either to the time elapsed or the number of hands played. This effectively made it a hybrid freezeout–shootout tournament, with freezeout play at larger tables and shootout play in the heads-up phase. A typical example is the mix-max event held at the 2012 World Series of Poker, in which the first day of play was nine-handed, the second day six-handed, and the rest of the tournament heads-up.
A guaranteed tournament means a specific prize pool is offered to the players even if the amount of buy-ins doesn’t cover that prize pool. It can be either a satellite where the prize includes a buy-in to a live tournament or one where the entry is to a bigger online event. Rebuy tournaments allow players to purchase more tournament chips in case they run out of chips or below a certain level of chips. Many players love to play bounty tournaments as they’re quite action-packed and require a different strategy than traditional MTTs. Bounty tournaments are MTTs that give a prize for knocking out a player on top of the traditional prize pool. Shootout tournaments are MTTs in which each table is played until just one player remains at that table.
Many online platforms provide detailed schedules for major poker events, including buy-in amounts, game types, and prize amounts. Success in poker tournaments requires more than just luck; it demands a strategic approach tailored to the evolving dynamics of the game. Full packages for PokerStars events may include accommodation, tournament entries, and travel expenses, making it an attractive option for aspiring tournament players.
This ensures that players will get eliminated if they don’t act. At most live events, the smallest buy-ins available are somewhere in the $300-to-$500 range. Thanks to the WSOP, No-Limit Texas Hold’em is the most popular poker variant in the world right now, both live and online.
Playing online poker tournaments might seem daunting at first, but there really isn’t anything to worry about. With frequent, well-established series like WCOOP and SCOOP, as well as EPT qualifiers, it’s become home to the most prestigious online poker events in the game. From freerolls to standard MTTs (multi-table tournaments), bounty builders to hypers, there are a range of different poker tournaments available for you to play on a daily basis. With patience, the right site, and a format that matches your mindset, online poker tournaments can be both rewarding and endlessly fun.
A full 100 live WSOP bracelets are up for grabs, matching last summer’s record-setting tally. The world’s biggest poker festival returns to the Las Vegas Strip from May 26 through July 15, once again staged across Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. ClubWPT invites all VIP members to play every Thursday & Saturday evenings as we go hunting for Diamonds! Jump in on the thrilling action in the August edition of our $10,000 Cash Diamond Challenge awarding a $2,500 in cold hard cash to the… $2,500 cash to 1st place!
These tournaments are run like a cash tournament but anyone who eliminates a player also receives the losing players ‘bounty’. Generally poker sites pay 15-20% of the field – so a tournament with 100 players would pay ~ 15 to 20 players, with most of the prize money allocated to the top spots. In cash tournaments players buy-in for a nominated amount and play down to the last person. The $50,000 buy-in, being five times larger than the buy-in for the Main Event, has thus far tended to deter amateurs from playing in this event, and the variety of games played require a broader knowledge of poker. Since 1972, the Main Event of the WSOP has been the $10,000 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold ‘em (NLHE) tournament (in 1971 the buy-in was $5,000 and the inaugural 1970 event was an invitational with winner determined by a vote from the players).
MTT is a broad term that can encompass many different types of poker tournament in itself. If we’re taking the term literally, an MTT, or Multi-Table Tournament, is a tournament that runs across two or more tables simultaneously. The best poker site to play freerolls is PartyPoker. However, freerolls offer a great opportunity to those new to poker to get to grips with the game, try out a new site and potentially earn a little bit of money to boost the bankroll.
Players can easily join these tournaments by registering through the tournament lobby on the platform. These formats cater to different play styles and strategies, making each tournament a fresh and exciting experience. Poker tournaments come in a variety of formats, each offering a unique challenge and excitement. Points earned from weekend tournaments will award one point to each Division! Players earn one point for making the final table (last 10 spots) in any qualifying tournament.
WSOP Asia Pacific Main Event winners
All of the 86 richest tournaments to date were played in No Limit Hold’em with more than $15,000,000 prize pool or player prize. New limits and games may be added based on player interest. In a fixed limit game, if there is an open pair on the fourth card, players have the option of making a bet or raising the higher limit.
- Typically the lowest paid finishing spot is about double the size of the buy-in for the event.
- Play tournaments that don’t last longer than the time you can allocate for playing.
- With the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 online poker sites have been barred from purchasing entrance directly for their users.
- MTTs take place over multiple tables with a specific number of players per table, usually 9.
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This guide covers all the major Texas Hold’em events and gives you a framework for deciding which ones belong on your calendar. Carrying the biggest stack forward into Thursday’s play is Yuxuan Deng, the only player to bag a seven-figure stack with 1,052,000. After just over eight hours of play, with the field three eliminations away from the money, it was time for what would be a lengthy two-and-a-half-hour session of hand-for-hand play to burst the bubble. The 2026 APT Incheon Main Event has become the largest international poker tournament ever held in the city, and the second-largest APT Main Event ever held in South Korea. Three different $26,000 NLH events will scatter themselves in between to make up a complete Super High Roller Series.
The bigger the field of players, the more rounds will occur in the shootout. The tournament is played all the way to the final table and until the winner is determined. Freezeout format is the most common playing format for tournament poker. They are an excellent format to practice your tournament skills before you jump into multi-table tournaments. If you want to learn more about playing winning tournament poker, read more on poker tournament strategy here. This means that the best overall performers across multiple tournaments will get extra compensation for their efforts during the series.
POT LIMIT HOLD ‘EMIn Pot Limit Hold ‘Em, a player can open for any amount up to four times the size of the big blind. In Crazy Pineapple Hold ‘Em, after the initial round of betting, players must discard one of their hole cards after the flop. After the initial round of betting, players must discard one of their hole cards before the flop. Ask in the Poker Room and if there is enough interest that day, we will spread games and limits that are approved. In the first eight seasons of the World Poker Tour, only four players have finished in the money at least once.
For those who prefer the convenience and accessibility of online poker, several platforms stand out for their comprehensive tournament offerings. Additionally, short-handed play, involving fewer players per table, is another exhilarating variant, typically featuring six or four players per table. Experience top-tier gameplay and the energy of a tour that brings players together from across the world!
The first tournament to reach a million dollar prize pool was the 1983 WSOP Main Event. Mohegan Sun hosts structured daily tournaments featuring No-Limit Hold ’Em and Bounty formats. Guests can also explore nearby dining options for convenient meals between games. However, in order to win the low half, the player must have an 8-low or better.
GGPoker’s comprehensive tournament schedule once again plays trumps in this case, as it offers a wide range of different turbo and hyper tournaments. There’s more action, since players must be more aggressive or face swift blind increases that fatally deteriorate their stacks. In this instance, cash games are the way to go and MTTs are out of the question, right? However, the guarantees on these daily tournaments tend to be lower than 888poker’s rivals. 888poker is one online poker site that has embraced the mystery bounty craze.
This series has, to date, focused on televising the European stops of the WPT. ‘The first WPT tournament to air on GSN, the Mirage Poker Showdown, debuted on March 24, 2008. In April 2007, WPTE announced that the series would move to GSN for its sixth season in the spring of 2008. In July 2006, seven poker professionals sued WPTE, alleging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the California Cartwright Act, and intentional interference with contract.
Mike Watson defeated Germany’s Leonard Maue (€697,175) in a heads-up heads-up event that flattened the prize pool and left the two accomplished pros playing for the trophy and an additional €33,340. With a $50k entry the mixed game event consists of 9 games and changed from being just a Horse event in 2009. The Poker Players Championship – Behind the main event the most prestigious tournament at the WSOP is the Players Championship.
However, since I play mainly high-stakes tournaments in the US, most of the players I’m familiar with are also high-stakes regulars. Have you talked to American players about coming to play APT events? The tables are livelier; they’re more willing to chase draws and take gambles, and their fundamentals are still a bit weaker compared to US players. The biggest difference between tournaments in Asia and those in the US is that Asian players tend to play more aggressively. Since I mostly play high-stakes events in the US, which normally start and finish late, I might be more suited to the pace of US high-stakes tournaments because I’m a night owl.
Coming from a sports journalism background, Platt told PokerNews poker news last month that fans can expect a “new era” of broadcasts, showcasing “more tournaments, more players, and more storylines.” As expected, they include Specialty Landmark Mega Satellites taking place each day, allowing players to satellite into the following day’s $5,000 or $10,000 buy-in events. The break gave players respite from the gruelling Main Event grind, the chance to drum up sponsorship deals, and fly family and friends to Las Vegas for the biggest final table of their lives. Seven-time WSOP bracelet winner and GGPoker ambassador Daniel Negreanu also pointed to expanded online qualification paths, encouraging players worldwide to “take your shot at the gold in 2026.”