A freezeout tournament is a fancy name for a “regular” poker tournament. Most of the poker tournaments you play with friends or have seen on tv are actually freezeout (though most people don’t regularly refer to them as such). The setup of these tournaments is very straightforward. Players pay their entry fee and are given a fixed amount of tournament chips. When the player loses all of their chips, they are out of the tournament. The tournament will go on until one player has all of the chips and that player will be the crowned the winner of the tournament.

• Texas Holdem Poker Tournament Rules
• Texas Holdem Poker Tournaments Video

Texas Holdem Poker is a card game and is played between 2-9 players. The winner is decided by the Poker Hand Rankings, by choosing the 5 best cards. What is Small and Big Blind? The small blind and big blind are forced bets that the players pay before they even see the cards. Whether we are playing in a cash game or in a tournament, the rules of No Limit Texas Hold’em remain the same. There are however a few differences in how the action of a hand may take place. Let’s take a look at what we are talking about Player A bets out on the river and we call the bet.

Freezeout tournaments typically pay a fixed percentage of players, usually in the 10% to 15% range, though this can vary at times.

For example, let’s say you play in a freezeout with 90 total entrants. This tournament would typically pay out winnings to the top nine players. This means that if you get 10th place, you get $0. As you move up the positions of paid spots, you will progressively be paid more money. In our example, this simply means that 8th place will get more money than 9th place, 7th place will get more money than 8th Place, and so on, all the way to first place who gets the most money. Freezeout tournaments are the most common tournament that you will encounter. If you ever see a tournament listed without much of a description, you can most likely assume that it is a freezeout.

Before hosting a tournament, let's understand more about Hold 'em. To get started, the two players to the left of the dealer put out their blinds. Blinds are the bets, made before the cards are dealt. They help start the betting and set the standard minimum bet. The player to the dealer's immediate left places the 'little blind' while the player two places over from the dealer places the 'big blind.' The big blind is the minimum bet and the little blind (or small blind) is 1/2 or 1/3 of that amount. Then the cards are dealt in the following order:

1. Pocket (or hole) cards - two cards facedown
2. Flop - three community cards face up in the center of the table
3. Turn - one community card face up in the center of the table
4. River – one community card face up in the center of the table

After each round of dealing, players can bet, raise the bet, check (pass the bet) or fold (give up the hand). Once the river card has been dealt (and betting is over), the remaining players show their cards and whoever makes the best five-card poker hand using their pocket cards and the cards on the table wins.

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Typically, there are betting guidelines, based on what variation you're playing, such as:

• Fixed Limit: Here, you have set bets per deal. For instance, you can bet $5 after the pocket cards and the flop; then $10 for the turn and river.
• Pot Limit: Players bet anywhere from the initial bet to the total amount in the pot, giving more freedom to bet big.
• No Limit: You can bet all the chips you have. Go hard or go home.

Texas Holdem Poker Tournament Rules

Other interesting variations play by the standard Hold 'em rules with a few twists:

Texas Holdem Poker Tournaments Video

• Pineapple: Players get three private cards dealt, but discard one before continuing the game.
• The River Wild: In this game, the river card is wild so you make it anything you want. The end of the game gets a bit crazy, because no one knows what they or opponents will have until they choose their wild card.