- Which Poker Game? -

So you know what game you want to play? Look at this Tournament board for ParadisePoker below. The tournament name is pretty easy. You might want to know that R&A means Re-buys and Add-ons allowed. Those with additional information give prize indications like $10,000 or $35,000 guaranteed prize pool, and the Legends WPT has a limited sponsorship to the World Poker Tour and the main prize - - ->

Next is the type of Poker. In this case Hold'em, Omaha , and O H/L8. Now it doesn't take much to determine that O H/L8 is Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or better to win low, but I know many people that do not know there is such a thing an Omaha High only. When they say Omaha, they mean Omaha HI/LO. Notice that there is no indication of the betting structure. Are the games Limit Hold'em or No Limit Hold'em? By clicking on each tournament additional information is provided that gives the structure, but you have click on each tournament for the information. Often when sitting in a Limit Hold'em Tournament, my chat box has filled with s*** and f*** as the No Limit Hold'em players find out too late that they didn't pay attention to the structure.

Notice that the price is then listed as a single amount. Paradise list entry fees as a total and then takes a percentage of the entry fee. Most sites list the service charge separate. For example: The highlighted Parrot is listed as $5.

On most sites it would be $5 +1 or $5 +.50 depending on what the service charge, or viggorish, vig, juice, or gouge is. Since we are mostly interested in Free Poker Tournaments, this isn't that important to us, but it is where they get the money to have those Free Poker Tournaments, and it should be part of this explanation.

Next; the number of Poker players, the date/time, the time remaining before the Poker Tournament begins. and the status. These are pretty self-explanatory, but when playing in free rolls one should always pay attention to how many players are registered. Fewer Poker players means better odds of winning.

ParadisePoker only has one Freeroll per day right now and the prize is a $300 entry into a $100,000 guaranteed Poker tournament.

Here is the Tournament board from another Poker site, DoylesRoom - - ->

Doyle's Room does a lot of thing right, but the Poker Tournament Board is not one of them. It is easy to see that we are playing Holdem and the tournaments shown here are all No Limit (NL), but can you see the 8 free tournaments listed?

2 x Bonus $5 Freerolls (I won one of these, the $1.35 didn't go far.)

5 x $2 Giveaway - Speed

1 x $500 Freeroll (Note, there are only 187 players registered.)

See the Buy-in on these "Free Poker" tournaments; on the $500, the buy in is $0 + 20. (2000 action points). These are discussed later on the; "How much does it cost" page? Some free rolls aren't.

Sarge

Editors Note: jbharshaw has written articles for me for over two years now, and has his own poker information site at www.bestpokerguide.net