One of the best advantages of playing online poker is the opportunity to play in different types of tournaments at all hours of the day. You have everything from multi-table free rolls to high buy-in Sit & Go tournaments. No matter how small your bankroll, there is always something to play. Tournaments are always fun because you get to play for a long amount of time for a small investment. Some of my favorite sites to play tournaments on include Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, and Party Poker. Not only does each site offer a variety of selection of tournaments, both MTTs and SNGs, along with different types of games like Razz or Seven-card Stud.
Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker has some of the best selection of low limit tournaments in the business, especially in different games aside from No Limit Texas Hold’em which is rare these days since NL has become super popular. They have plenty of Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Hold’em, Seven-card Stud, Seven-card Stud Hi/Lo, H.O.R.S.E., Razz, Omaha Hi, and Omaha Hi/Lo. It’s rare to find H.O.R.S.E. tournaments and especially Razz. The buy-ins for their multi-table tournaments range from $1 up to $200. There are also several daily free rolls where you can enter for free to win cash prizes. You can participate in Play Money tournaments or use your Full Tilt Points to enter special tournaments.
Full Tilt Poker also has a great selection of Sit & Gos (SNGs) ranging from $4 up to $200. They also offer play money SNGs. Most sites specialize in only NL SNGs, but Full Tilt offers SNGs in every single game that they spread. Yeah, you can even play a Razz SNG! They also offer SNGs in NL Hold’em, Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Hold’em, Seven-card Stud, Seven-card Stud Hi/Lo, H.O.R.S.E., Omaha Hi, and Omaha Hi/Lo. The best part is they spread plenty of $5 SNGs for players with smaller bankrolls.
Full Tilt also has a variety of special tournaments. Those include satellites and super-satellites for special tournaments like the Ultimate Poker Challenge, WPT events, and different events at the WSOP. This past year they even offered a satellite for the WSOP Razz event. You can also inquire about hosting your own private tournament with your friends.
The best part about Full Tilt is being able to play against some of your favorite pros. You never know whether the next SNG or MTT you play in might feature a WSOP bracelet winner or a WPT champion sitting next to you at your table. Pros that regularly play on Full Tilt include: Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Jen Harman, Andy Bloch, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, John Juanda, Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Clonie Gowen, Mike Matusow, John D’Agostino, Layne Flack, Kristy Gazes, Rafe Furst, Perry Friedman, Gavin Smith, and Allen Cunningham.
Poker Stars
Poker Stars probably hosts the best structured tournaments in the business. You get $1,500 in starting chips in most tournaments and the levels are structured longer than most online sites which gives you a better opportunity to play poker. Poker Stars is also famous for being the place where two of the last three WSOP Champions won their seats via a satellite. Both Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer won $10,000 seats to the WSOP playing satellites. Poker Stars gave away more seats in the 2005 WSOP main event than any other organization. One of out every five players in the main event qualified through Poker Stars.
Poker Stars is also the sponsor of the European Poker Tour, which means that there are plenty of chances to win seats in different events scattered throughout Europe. You have several chances to win a seat to an EPT event or to the EPT Grand Finale in Monte Carlo.
Poker Stars is also the host of the WCOOP or the World Championships of Online Poker. For over two weeks, Poker Stars offered daily tournaments with prize pools reaching almost $12.7 million. The final event had a prize pool of over $3.5 million which was the largest online poker tournament in history.
Poker Stars also offers a variety of rebuy tournaments in addition to hosting private tournaments. They are also running free rolls all day. The offer MTTs and SNGs in NL Hold’em, Limit Hold’em, PL Hold’em, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi/Lo, Seven-card Stud, and Seven-card Stud Hi/Lo. They also have a cool heads-up SNG which is a great way to practice your heads up play along with Turbo SNGs which offer accelerated blinds.
Party Poker
Party Poker is the largest site online with the most players and some of the largest fields of tournament players. They offer MTTs and SNGs for NL Hold’em, Limit Hold’em, Omaha Hi/Lo, and Seven-Card Stud. They also have a variety of Rebuy tournaments, free rolls, “Speed”, and guaranteed tournaments. The buy-ins for the tournaments are as low as $1 and are high as $100. SNGs run from $5 to $200.
Every night they offer a $150 Super Weekday NL tournament and offer up various MTT and SNG satellites which run 24 hours a day. They also have a $200,000 and $500,000 Guaranteed tournaments. In addition, Party Poker is also the sponsor of the Party Poker Million Cruise, which is the largest Limit Hold’em tournament in the world. They are constantly running satellites and qualifiers for the Party Poker Million.
Party Poker also gives away tons of packages for the WPT, the WSOP main event, the Aussie Million in Melbourne, and the European Open.
The players on Party Poker are notorious for being some of the worst on the internet. Their tournaments are also filled with plenty of inexperienced players, which is great if you are a shark.
Summary
Overall, the three best sites to play online tournaments are Full Tilt, Poker Stars, and Party Poker. Full Tilt is great because of their vast number of choices in games along with being able to play against your favorite pros. Poker Stars offers the best structured tournaments online along with being the most popular place to try to win a seat in the WSOP main event. And Party Poker has some of the biggest prize pools along with a huge collection of inexperienced players.
