Right now, SunPoker.com players can gain entry via satellite to the first $1 Million tournament scheduled on September 13, 2009.
The second $1 Million is on October 11th. The buy-in into the big event is $500+35, but of course SunPoker tournaments will be running hundreds of satellites for players to win their seats to the tournament. In fact, players can win a seat to the big game for as little as .44 cents with satellites running every day. Click here for the full schedule of satellites
You can also click the banner below for more information.
Poker is without doubt one of the most famous card games in the world, played over kitchen tables, in clubs, casinos and even over virtual tables in online poker rooms. While some other card games, such as casino war, are based on chance, in poker it is skill that often decides who will end raking in the chips. And when skills are at stake, it’s a short way to a tournament.
Nowadays many players choose to play from the comfort of their own homes, visiting one of the online poker rooms. However for many players sitting by a real poker table seems more prestigious, allowing to truly mark your presence in the poker world and perhaps meet face to face with some of the best players there are. Not to mention that prize pools in major tournaments often reach truly astonishing sums. Therefore many choose to travel to often distant places to feel the unique atmosphere and put their skills and luck to the test in hope for fame and big money.
Prize pools benefit very much from buy-ins paid by players when they sign up to a tournament. But paying buy-in to a major poker tournament is often a big expense for an average budget. Because of that tournament organizers offer less wealthy poker players to qualify at a lower cost through satellite tournaments. Apart from that many online poker rooms and casinos offer special tournaments where a skilled player can win a package including not only a seat in one of the events, but also travel, stay in a hotel and some pocket money to enjoy your time in one of the famous casino resorts.
And if by any chance poker action and big money were not tempting enough, the destinations certainly are. The World Series of Poker, the most important tournament in the poker world takes place in Las Vegas, the ultimate destination for all casino fans. But other tournaments do not lag much behind. Poker Tour series organized by PokerStars on various continents invite players to casinos in Monte Carlo, Moscow, Sydney, San José in Costa Rica or an exotic casino resort in Macau. This way even if you are not the one to play at a final table, you can still indulge in the unique casino atmosphere in some of the most exciting places in the world.
Online, all I play is turbo sit and go poker tournaments. In this style of internet poker, blinds go up every five minutes. When playing with friends at home in a live poker tournament, turbos are impossible to play. Five minutes will get you maybe two hands in with the amount of time shuffling, coloring up chips, placing blinds, and everything else.
So this weekend I got some guys over to play poker to celebrate my new basement. I had not hosted a live tournament in a while, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to manage blinds. This is how we always play, no matter how many players.
1. Start out with 1500 chips
2. Blinds go up every 15 minutes
3.Level – Blinds
1 – 5/10
2 – 10/20
3 – 25/50
4 – 50/100
5 – 100/200
6 – 200/400
7 – 400/800
For my poker tournament on Saturday, only 3 guys showed. I wasn’t sure what to use for blinds. I have used some different poker software downloads before where you can set the blinds manually, and act as a clock and alarm before. None of these offered advice or suggested what to set the blinds at though. I heard about this site Blind Valet on a couple of different poker forums, so I checked it out.
Blind Valet was one of the best poker tools I have ever used and the easiest poker software by far. I entered in how many people were playing (4), how many chips everyone should start with (1500), and we wanted 15 minute blinds. Blind Valet also asks for what the value of the poker chips you are playing with, so I entered those and clicked Calculate. Note: You can click on the images to see a larger version.
The next screen shows what the blind levels should be and how to distribute the poker chips to each player. I clicked on “customize tournament clock”.
This screen shows some customizations that you can do to the application. I was in a hurry to get the poker tournament started, so I didn’t test out any of these and clicked Launch Tournament Clock.
This program worked perfectly all night. No one had to keep track of when the blinds were coming up. The blind levels changed and updated automatically. One minute warning that blinds were going up. Alarm when the blinds are up.
The tournament blind structure that Blind Valet suggested worked out perfect. We were able to get in four games in four hours, and everyone liked the structure. If I would have used my normal structure we would have only played two.
You can click on any of the picture above to get a little better view of the screen shots. My pictures do not do this site any justice though, so just go check it out – blindValet.fr
