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Question about participating in World Poker Tournaments?

so when ppl like phil ivey have 500,000 chips or w/e..is that money...can he cash it out if he wants to, or is he forced to keep on playing or something. What kind of amount do these ppl win? And what are the requirements to enter a big tournament like this?

Public Comments

1. When those pros enter tournements, they cannot cash out, in a tourny you have to play until there is a winner, you can only by in once and once your chips are gone your eliminated. If they are playing in a cash game, they can buy in mutiple times and cash out at any point. Most of the tournys have by ins that can range form 50 bucks to tens of thousands. Cash games usually just have a minimum buy in.
2. Above answers are correct, but just wanted to note there is also such a thing as a "rebuy" tournament, where if you lose all your chips, you are still allowed to pay the tournament buy-in again and get the same amount of chips you started with. Also, online there are free tournaments (called freerolls) and also very inexpensive ones depending on which site you use (as little as 10 cents at Poker Stars, as little as $1 at most poker sites). The higher the buy-in the bigger the prizes tend to be, though. The last $2 NL hold em buy-in tourney I joined had a top prize of $650. The World Series, on the other hand, has a $10,000 buy-in and top prize from 6 to 12 million.
3. It depends on what type of tournament it is... The most typical type of tournament does not allow you to cash out nor re-buy in, which is tournament-style playing. However, there are some tournaments, particularly in the WSOP, that are cash game style, where you buy-in with a certain amount of money and can cash out when you want. There are also other tournament-style games that allow you to buy back in a limited number of times (re-buy tournament). The only requirements to enter are the 21-yr-old age limit and the cost of the buy-in.
4. All poker variants can be palyed in 2 ways... 'Tournament' or 'Ring Game' In 'tournament' each player coughs up an entry free and you are all given a set amount of chips each with NO real monetary value. Example: Lets say it costs everyone $5500 to enter a tournament, the casino pockets $500 frome veryone for themselves and $5000 from everyone goes to the prizepool. If there is 100 players you are all playing for a piece of a $500,000 prizepool. Everyone stats with $10,000 in tournament chips (no real monatary value) and you paly poker with these fake chips you either run out (and be eliminated from the tournament) or win every chip from everyone in the tournament (And in doing so win the tournament). Everyone in the tournament is playing against each other but you only have to face around 8-10 other players at a time. In 'ring game' you play with chips that have a dollar value (eg. a $50 chip is worth a REAL $50). You only have to play agianst whoever else sits at your table. If you run out of money you can buy back onto the table again for no more then teh maximum table buy in. (eg. if table max is $50, and you are on $500, you cannot pull out $50 and add another $50 to your stack. If you are on $30, you allowed to pull out $20 and add $20 to your stack to meet the maximum.) Hope that makes sense