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Poker Tournament Strategy: Shootouts

One type of poker tournament you may encounter in your poker room is the poker shootout. It’s not quite a sit-and-go, but not exactly the same as a traditional multi-table poker tournament. Before you decide whether you want to try your hand at a shootout, it’s important to know a little bit about them.

What is a Poker Shootout?

A poker shootout is a tournament where the first round is played as a single table freeze-out down to one player. Once each table in the tournament has a winner, the remaining players (who all receive some amount of money) play down to a winner in a traditional format with the prize pool distributed on a graded scale as in a traditional tournament. The game in shootouts is normally Texas Holdem.

Why Play a Poker Shootout?

Players who enjoy sit-and-gos will probably enjoy the poker shootout format as the first round behaves much like a sit-and-go. Shootouts are appealing to players who enjoy short-handed play or who don’t like the breaking and changing of tables that comes with a traditional multi-table tournament. In addition, the first round of a poker shootout usually goes fairly quickly, although if you win the table you may have to wait around for a while for other tables to finish.

Why Not Play a Poker Shootout?

Since the first round is winner take all, there is often a heavy element of luck in the shootout once it gets down to two or three players. Also, some players like the idea of a table that constantly gets restocked with new players as players are eliminated.

What Are Some Poker Shootout Strategies?

It’s important to remember that the first round of a poker shootout is winner take all, so there is no reason to try to play conservatively to, like in regular poker games, “move up the ladder.” If you have a chance to accumulate many chips, it is usually better to take it than to try to conserve chips so you can hang around a few rounds longer. That having been said, some players decide to make deals in the first round. That is, if there are two players left, one may agree to concede in exchange for a percentage of whatever the other player wins in the second round. That percentage will generally be based on the chip count. For example, if one player has 8,000 chips and the other has 2,000, the shorter stack may agree to let the larger stack play the second round if he shares 20 percent of his winnings.

Poker article provided by PokerListings.com