Spicing Up Your Home Tournaments

There are many ways to change the style of poker you play besides just changing the limits of the game and such.

A common method used by online sites are bounties. A bounty is usually placed on the better players in a tournament, usually people who have consistently played really well in certain games. The person who is able to knock out a player with a bounty on his head will usually get a bonus and win more money.

Another option used by many tournaments, including World Series events, are rebuys. Rebuys allow players who are low in chips to get a better chance to win a tournament. By paying an entrance fee a second time, you are able to gain a chip boost almost immediately. Most tournaments in these styles will have limits on rebuys on amounts and times.

It is easy for players to lose a poker tournament early on one hand, so rebuys are a good way of involving everyone more than they would be able to participate before. They usually end in the middle rounds of a tournament and the players left battle it out in a normal tournament game.

A common addition to rebuy games are the add-on features. At the end of the rebuy time period, meaning when players are no longer allowed to rebuy into a game, players are occasionally able to purchase an add-on, or a chip increase, for the more vital stages of the game.

Yet another tournament method is called the shootout tournament. In this game you have a normal multi table game. But instead of reordering tables as players get eliminated, you play out each table until one winner is left. All the winners will then reassemble into another table and battle it out for first. This allows the final table to be full of players with the same amount of chips and is a good change up from normal poker tournaments.