Tournament poker is the biggest thing there is in our sport. This is where you’ll win the biggest prizes poker has to offer, maybe even eight figures if you take down the Main Event at the World Series of Poker. But when the first WSOP was held in 1970, it was just seven guys playing a mixed cash game; Johnny Moss was voted the winner, and received a silver cup instead of the now-famous WSOP gold bracelet.
Now over 10,000 people are signing up every year to play the WSOP Main Event. And thousands more can be found right here at Bodog Poker playing in our online poker tournaments. The more players who enter, the bigger the prize pools. This is why multi-table tournaments (MTTs) have become so popular over the past 50+ years. Our latest comprehensive poker guide will show you what the fuss is all about and introduce you to the benefits of playing MTTs at Bodog.
Understanding Multi-Table Tournaments in Poker
Whether you’re playing live or online, there are two basic poker tournament types: single-table tournaments (STTs), and MTTs as mentioned above. STTs are exactly what they sound like: there’s only one poker table required to seat all of the players. This format is usually reserved for Sit & Go tournaments (SNGs), which begin as soon as the table is full.
When we talk about MTTs in poker, we’re usually talking about tournaments that start at a scheduled time, with however many people sign up – a minimum and maximum number of players may be applied ahead of time. Each player will pay their buy-in plus their entry fee. The buy-ins are combined to form the prize pool, which is why it grows bigger the more people who play.
Benefits of Playing MTTs at Bodog
If you’ve ever played a poker tournament, you know how much fun these can be. Bodog Poker tournaments are even better; our most popular tourneys, like the Main Event at Bodog’s annual Black Diamond Poker Open (BDPO), feature guaranteed prize pools that are awarded no matter how many people enter – although those prize pools typically end up growing even larger than the guarantee.
You also have your choice of hundreds of different tournaments to play each day. Is No-Limit Texas Hold’em your favourite game, like it is for most players? Do you prefer Pot-Limit Omaha, or maybe even some Omaha Hi/Lo? All of these games and more can be found on the tournament schedule at Bodog Poker. Our industry-leading poker interface has everything laid out for you in our lobby so you can quickly and easily find the tournaments you like the most.
Exclusive Bodog Multi-Table Tournament Promotions and Bonuses
To get even more value out of your MTT experience at Bodog Poker, make sure to take advantage of our generous promotions, including the 100% Poker Welcome Bonus for up to $1,000 in free bonus cash, just for playing with us here at Bodog. We also offer exclusive freeroll tournaments to players who deposit with us, as well as our VIP program and plenty of other goodies that you can discover by visiting our Promotions page.
In the meantime, let’s take a closer look at those benefits of playing MTTs at Bodog Poker, and why our players have made us their No. 1 choice for online poker in Canada and across the Americas.
Variety of Tournaments
Having the option to play different kinds of MTTs is essential if you want to develop your poker game. Pot-Limit Omaha is an exciting way to play, and Omaha Hi/Lo makes it even more challenging, but even if you stick exclusively to No-Limit Hold’em, Bodog still has the poker tournament variety you need, from standard freezeout tourneys to Knockouts and Progressive Knockouts – with buy-in levels for players of every experience level and bankroll.
User Experience and Interface
We don’t mean to brag, but our online poker client is head-and-shoulders above anything else you’ll find on the internet. That’s because Bodog Poker has been around since well before the poker boom of the early 2000s, constantly working behind the scenes to update and enhance your playing experience. We also changed the game in 2011 when we made the switch to anonymous tables, protecting our player pool from exploitation by poker bots and other bad actors.
Strategies for Success in Multi-Table Tournaments
Now it’s time for the meat and potatoes: poker tournament strategies for MTTs. This is where we’ll give you the basic MTT tips that will get your journey started on the right foot; you can learn more about the finer details of poker strategy by browsing through our library of articles here at Bodog.
Early Stage Strategy
The key thing to remember about poker tournaments in general is that you’re not playing with the same chips that you get in cash games. Those chips have monetary value printed right on them; tournament chips do not. You can’t just cash them in and leave the table whenever you want – and unless it’s a re-buy or re-entry tournament, you can’t reload and keep playing when someone takes all of your chips.
This means survival is usually more important in tournament poker than accumulating chips. And that goes double for early stage poker strategy, when the blinds are low and there’s not much to win in the pot. Focus on hand selection and table position; consider playing tight poker early on, opening with just your strongest hands from under the gun, and folding/checking down in marginal situations that would otherwise be slightly profitable in cash poker.
Middle Stage Adjustments
This is actually the trickiest stage in MTT poker. In the early going, you’re usually deep-stacked enough to make most of the moves you can in cash poker, like 5-betting pre-flop or triple-barrelling post-flop. But unless you happen to win a lot of chips early on, that leverage fades away once the blinds get bigger, and your relative stack size dwindles to 30-40 big blinds.
Now we’re at the point where aggressive play makes more sense. The best middle stage poker tactics put added emphasis on chip accumulation, and taking bigger risks in order to get that chip stack back to the point where you’ve regained your leverage. You don’t want to get too deep in the weeds with smaller suited connectors; be more willing than usual to go all-in on the flop or turn with semi-bluffs featuring big cards, hoping that you either block your opponents (making them more likely to fold), or that you’ll complete your big hand by the river.
Late Stage and Final Play
On one hand, late-stage poker strategy is quite easy: You’re in push/fold territory once your tournament stack gets down to around 15bb or so. It’s a lot simpler to learn and execute push/fold strategies for various stack sizes, and apply them for whichever position you’re sitting at, than it is to figure out the finer aspects of deep-stacked play.
Then again, because these are MTTs, the “value” of your chips can fluctuate wildly depending on where you are in the tournament, and how many chips you and your opponents have. Smart poker wizards have come up with a solution: the Independent Chip Model (ICM). This math is too complicated to do at the table, but if you study between tourneys, you’ll find that it’s usually a good idea to play incredibly tight as you move up the ladder, especially around the “money bubble” and all the other pay jumps as you move closer to victory.
ICM basically goes out the window once you’re playing heads-up poker. Now it’s all about taking down your opponent; the relative stacks still tend to be short at this point, so it might be push or fold here, although you can try stretching things out by open-limping instead of open-raising. How good are you at poker? If you’re still getting your feet wet to some degree, consider sticking with big raises or just shoving your chips in the middle instead of getting fancy.
Bankroll Management for MTT Players
All of the poker strategy in the world won’t help if you don’t exercise good poker bankroll management. Poker is still a game of luck as well as skill, and downswings are even more common in tournament poker, where only the top 15% or so of entrants receive a cash prize – most likely a min-cash of around twice their buy-in. The more players there are in the field, the rarer it will be for you to finish in the really big money, let alone win the whole tournament.
That’s why you really need to emphasize sustainable poker play if you’re getting into MTTs. Beginners are commonly recommended to have at least 100 buy-ins (including entry fee) in their Bodog Poker account for any tournament they might enter; more advanced MTT bankroll tips will have you focus on smaller-field MTTs, which will help you win smaller prizes more frequently and keep your bankroll from going south.
Leveraging Bodog’s Special Features to Improve Your MTT Experience
While our anonymous poker tables do keep your profile private, you can still learn a lot about your game here at Bodog; special poker features like our Hand History review can show you where you’re making mistakes, and give you important information on hands that you didn’t catch when you first played them in real time.
Plugging the leaks in your game should be one of your top priorities when you’re developing as a player. The more time you spend carefully examining your past hands, the better you’ll get at weeding out those mistakes and avoiding those protracted downswings that MTTs can produce.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Multi-Table Tournaments
If multi-table tournaments seem a bit daunting to you, here’s the good news: All forms of poker are pretty much the same in the end. You’re still trying to make the best 5-card hand in MTTs, and/or make your opponents fold. The early stage of a tournament plays much like a cash game, so if you’re skilled at avoiding poker mistakes at a cash table, you’ll avoid most of the MTT pitfalls that can happen during the first few blind levels – and adjusting to the shorter stacks in the middle and late stages shouldn’t be too difficult.
Otherwise, the best poker advice we can give you for MTTs is to think about them as clearly as possible. Some poker players get angry and tilt off their stacks because they don’t understand how probability works. Others are timid, and will only get their chips in with premium hands. Don’t let emotions or superstition get in the way of good poker; ground yourself during the tournament by paying very close attention to the players around you, and if you happen to find yourself going on tilt, take the next orbit off and collect your thoughts.
Take Your Seat: Registering for a Multi-Table Tournament
All right, now that you’ve been fully briefed on the wonderful world of MTTs, here’s how you can lock down your seat at Bodog Poker. We’re assuming you’ve already signed up for your free Bodog account and made your first deposit – don’t forget to claim that 100% Poker Welcome Bonus if you haven’t. The next thing to do is log into our poker lobby, select Tournaments from the menu, and you’ll see all of the different MTTs on the schedule. Use our tournament filters to specify what kind of tournament you’re looking for:
– Tournament Type (Regular, Knockouts, etc.)
– Game Type (Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo)
– Buy-In ($0-$5 to >$50)
– Status (Registering, Late Registration, etc.)
– Limit (No Limit, Pot Limit, Fixed Limit)
There you have it – you are now well on your way to achieving MTT greatness at Bodog Poker. Consult our treasure trove of articles, ranging from Canada’s best poker players to tips for staying focused while playing poker, to find out more about tournaments and all of the other great games we have for you at Bodog, and we’ll see you on the felt.