Since poker tournaments started being broadcast on TV a few years ago, there has been a huge surge in the popularity of online poker and with good reason, because poker is one of the most thrilling games around.  Nowadays any one of us can take part in a poker tournament right now in the comfort of our own homes, however it can be hard getting your head round all the different varieties of poker tournaments available and the best places to play. So we have outlined the best places to play and the exact nature of each tournament, so you can know the difference between a Sit & Go tournament and a Shootout tournament the next time you play.

Most poker tournaments require you to pay a buy in fee for which you’ll get a stack of chips in return. The traditional kind of poker tournament is know as a Mutli-Table tournament (MTTs), they begin at a certain time and take place over multiple tables which have a specific amount of players. As the tournament progresses and players go bust, the tables are broken up and the players are reshuffled till there is only one table remaining. If you go bust early on and it’s a rebuy tournament you can buy another stack of chips, however this is usually available only early on in the game.

Sit & Go’s or SNG’s are some of the most popular forms of online tournaments and are very straightforward. They have no set start time and are usually comprised of one or two tables,  once all the seats are filled, the game begins. On some popular sites, the seats can fill up so quickly you don’t even have a chance to buy in! The pot usually goes to the top three players but this also depends on how many tables there are.

Shootout Tournaments are a combination of MTT’s and SNG’s , however instead of the tables being broken up when players drop out of the games, the winner of each table will move onto the next table, made up of winners from the previous tables. This continues until there is one overall winner. The amount of players in the tournament dictates how long it will last.

Bounty Tournaments are  MTT’s,  where you are awarded a prize for eliminating a particular player. They are rare and usually occur in professional tournaments.  In Bounty tournaments when you take another player all in and you win, you are given their bounty chip, which you can cash in for the amount the player paid for his bounty chip. These kinds of games make for some interesting poker strategies as you attempt to take down an individual player.

Turbo Tournaments are pretty self explanatory. They are simply MTT’s or SnG’s where the blinds increase more quickly and you have less time to make your bets, forcing you to act quicker and make faster decisions.

Satellite Tournaments are tournaments where you are playing for a buy in into a bigger tournament with a large prize pool. The most famous example of this is Chris Moneymaker who won his $10,000 seat into the main event at the 2003 WSOP through a $40 satellite, proving it can be done.

Weekly Guaranteed Tournaments are the bread and butter of all poker sites and feature huge prize pools that sometimes offer in excess of £1,000,000. The larger you buy-in the more you could cash out. You can also enjoy poker freerolls at many sites, which are exactly what they suggest, a tournament with no entry fee.

That concludes our overview of the poker Tournaments available online, so have a look around the site and see if you can find any Tournaments that appeal to you.