How To Enter The Poker Tournament Circuit

Written by Raj on April 27th, 2006

The online edition of a local British Columbia newspaper has an inspiring story of a poker player making it to a large Canadian Texas Hold’Em tournament (3000 players) taking place in early May at the Niagara Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.

As the article indicates, Marty Kelly has been playing poker for 20 years and Texas Holdem for 3 years. He qualified in last year’s tournament in Vancouver, British Columbia, and says that he was rather lucky to have his name picked again to qualify this year.

For those of you that are not familiar with the ins and outs of qualifying for a tournament, the article gives a nice explanation. If you’ve watched Texas Hold’Em tourneys on TV and wondered why some players had more chips to start than others, and where those chips came from, you can read the article for details, but I’ll summarize here.

Players cover their own travel and lodging expenses. If a player gets in on a freeroll, they do not have to play any entry fee. Regardless, everyone starts with the same number of chips. Since there are hundreds or thousands of players for a tourney, ther are multiple tables. Winners from each table move on to the next round, and so on until the championship round. By that point, the remaining players have brought along their accumulated chip winnings from previous rounds. Which explains why there may such variation in chip amounts at the championship table.

As the article indicates, Marty Kelly had to decide whether he could afford the travel half way across Canada, as well as the time off work. It’s a very real expense. Many Texas Hold’em pros spend upwards of US$100,000 per year in just travel and lodging expenses. Then there’s the competition in many cases, which may be several thousand per tournament. Becoming a pro player is obviously something you want to grow into.

Technorati Tags: thepokerblog, the poker blog, texas holdem, texas hold’em, poker tournaments, niagara falls