poker sites for tournaments

[nazbrok]

hi,

I am currently only playing at stars and I start to be pissed to play those tournament with 1k to 2k players now. It's like playing the lotterie.

Which others sites have good tournament structure (not like party or pacific where you get too few chips and the blinds up quickly) and not *too much* people in it ? In other words what are the others good sites for tournament [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

thx.

[Cleveland Guy]

I only play at Pokerroom. I'm not sure about anywhere else.

A typical nighttime $5 +1 has about 300-400.
A 10 or 20 gets around 200 People.

The 10K guaranteed is between 400- 600.

Blinds start at 10/20 and go up every 12 Minutes. Starting chips for most tourneys is 1500.

I don't have other sites, but this structure seems to work for me.

[nazbrok]

ok thx, I will give a try.

[Ghazban]

Ultimate Bet has a decent tournament structure and usually smaller fields than the big ones on Stars and Party. I don't know what buy-in range you're looking at but the cheaper ones (5+.50) are usually less than a thousand entrants and the weekly 500+30 is usually only a couple hundred (to give the two extremes).

[Elijah Bailey]

UB also has $100 tournies daily with fewer than 200 people. The other advantage to these is how easy it is to get tourny entry chips. I have also found that on stars, the sats to the bigger tournies are fairly easy. At the $36 level, 1 out of 6 gets $215 in tourney chips.

[Percula]

Absolute Poker would be a good one based on what you are looking for.

Pros:
1500 starting chips blinds increase at either 15min or 30min (depends on the tourament).

Most of the regularly scheduled touraments under $20 buy-in have less than 100 players.

The 4K and 8K they run on Thrus and Sun are generally under 600 and 1000.

Lots of fish similar to Pacifc.

Low minimum deposit.

Cons:
The software is not great. It will eat your computer resourses, the tourament lobby is almost always out of date by 15-30 minutes (nearly impossible to tell when the bubbles are), DO NOT watch the other table when it gets down to two tables as when they combine to one table you will be locked out and have to kill the program and restart it to be able to act (cost me big time, lesson learned).

Lots of fish that will put bad beats on you, LOL.

The deposit bonus will be nearly impossible to clear unless you play ring games too. The way they work it is get 1 point per dallor of fee (not the buy in). So lets say you play (3) $10 + $1 touraments, you have earned 3 points, you need 100 points to clear $10 of bonus.

Payout structure is strange. Either they pay too many people and the final table does not get the best of it, or they pay too few and only the top 5% get paid.

Other notes:
It seems that their many players are freerollers. They run several freerolls every day and they always fill up within minutes. Some of these players move up to the real money and are "good hunting".

BTW, I would not agree with you about Pacfic. Granted the lower starting chips (800) and the 10min blinds can be a up hill climb, but most of the touraments there will have eliminated 50% to 75% of the field in the first hour. If you only play 3-5 hands in the first hour and maximise your return you will be in good position for money. I avoid preflop all-ins in the first hour, post flop with the nuts or even 2nd nuts can be very rewarding.

[Silvio]

Nazbrok, if you want a real good value tournament with not many players in it, check www.betfairpokerchampionship.com. currently 76 registered players for £100 000 guaranteed! Don't know about the blind structure, but have played a few tourneys on betfair poker, and they are OK.
Oh, and they also have satellites for a land based tourney in the caribbean in December - I won my seat in a sat which had 53 players registered at £35 buy-in. You can also win a seat for the caribbean stuff from the Inside Edge magazine website (inside-edge-mag.com or something like that).
I think Betfairpoker launched in June or July, but they don't have the volume yet to fill their bigger prize tourneys! Lots of good value to be had there.