Tournament Amateur Poker | Poker Guidebook
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Poker for Amateurs

The two largest and most well-known tournaments are the World Poker Tour championship event and the World Series of Poker, both held in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The 2005 World Series of Poker was the first held outside of Binion's Horseshoe Casino, though the final few days of the main event were held in the legendary Benny's Bullpen. Future tournaments have been held at one of the Harrah's Entertainment properties; since 2005, the Rio has served as the host venue.

Arguably the most publicized European tournament is the Poker Million, which began in 2000 on Sky Sports, following on from the success of the Late Night Poker television show.

In addition to these events, there are other major tournaments throughout the year. The World Poker Tour broadcasts a series of open tournaments throughout the U.S. and Caribbean with buy-ins from $5,000 to $25,000, as well as a European event.

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Many online poker sites offer incentives to players in the form of bonuses.[15][16] Usually the bonuses are given after a certain number of raked hands are played. For example, a site may offer a player who deposits $100 a bonus of $50 once he plays 500 raked hands. A poker player who can at least break even can become a long-term winner by playing with poker bonuses. A winning poker player can add to their winnings with the use of bonuses.

In addition, several online cardrooms employ VIP Managers to develop VIP programs to reward regular players and additional bonuses exist for players who wish to top-up their accounts. These are known as reload bonuses.

Partypoker offers players great tournaments, free games and player bonuses.

Poker hand converters allow players to take text-based online poker hand history files from different online cardrooms and convert them into formats more friendly to the eye and suitable for posting on online message boards. Hand converters are often used to show played hands to other players for analysis and discussion. Depending on the converter used, the output may include the pot size per betting round, blind level, seating order, and stack sizes. Most online cardrooms store played hands on the computer of the player, allowing players to analyze and keep track of their own performance or to discuss poker strategy with other players. Most major poker sites such as Partypoker provide players with hand history files, while a few such as the Playtech network offer hand histories, but not in a text file format. In addition to using hand history files to analyze and improve an individual's game, they can also be used to gather statistical data about opponents, both those a player has played against and even opponents never faced. Whether the latter constitutes as cheating depends on the Acceptable Use Policy of the cardroom. Sharing the raw hand history files is generally considered collusion and a violation of the AUP. Even though some sites don't offer a readily available hand history files, you can usually request a transcript by e-mail. The first hand history converter, PokerStat, was introduced in 2001. Numerous software products and web-based tools now offer similar functionality.

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PartyPoker.com was launched in 2001 and has since grown to be one of the largest online poker card rooms. At peak times, tens of thousands of players can be found playing on the site's virtual poker tables. The site is endorsed by Mike Sexton, the host of the World Poker Tour television show. Games include Texas Hold 'em (No Limit and Fixed Limit), Omaha and Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven-card Stud and Seven-card Stud Hi-Lo. Stakes range from 0.05/0.10 to 100/200 for limit games, and 0.02/0.04 to 25/50 for No-Limit/Pot-Limit games. Players can play for either real money or play money. All poker variants offered at real money tables are offered at play money tables. Party Poker offers a bad beat jackpot, which has at times grown to over $700,000 USD.