Tournaments

Best UK Online Casinos keep you updated of the tournaments going on at online casinos so that you can also participate, play and win. Also online casino tournaments can be a quick and fun way of achieving a big win without putting much of your bankroll at risk. There are lots of variety in tournaments to choose from. There can be slots tournament. Live tournaments, poker tournaments, sports tournaments, bingo tournaments and many more of such kind.

Tournaments at Online Casinos

Online casinos organize many tournaments. Many such tournaments are categorized according to the gaming software like Microgaming casinos slot tournaments and so on. The Cryptologic and Microgaming casinos all have a limit on the amount of time you can play during the tournament, so you need to use it wisely.

All Microgaming casinos with tournaments run scheduled tournaments for smaller prizes at all hours of the day. They also run sit-and-go slots tournaments which start as soon as the minimum number of players have registered. Some casinos also use an “equalized payout system” to determine the winners, ignoring bet size. You don’t even have to enter – simply play the nominated games with real money during tournament hours, and players are automatically ranked according to the amount won per unit wagered over their best 20 consecutive wagers. So you need to check out the rules before playing.

So the most popular variety are slots tournaments, but several casinos also offer tournaments for blackjack, casino hold’em, roulette and other table games, as well as video poker tournaments.

How do online casino tournaments work

It is very simple. You enter the tournament and are then given an amount of casino chips to start with. You then have a limited amount of time to try to build the biggest chip stack by playing the tournament game. In some casinos where there are no free tournaments you need to buy the chips to enter this game.

Free Tournaments at online casinos

One of the most popular types of online slot tournaments are free tournaments. Also known as freerolls these tournaments cost you nothing to enter and award real money prizes. While the prize pools may not be as big as some of the buy-in tournaments they do offer a chance of trying out online tournaments without risking any of your own money.

At land based casinos these free rolls are only reserved for VIP players but at online casinos anyone can enter and play. As with most things that are free there can be a catch – the prize pools can sometimes be bonus money.

This means that when you win a tournament where bonus money is the prize you will have to play with that money on the regular slots before you can withdraw the money. This is might seem like a negative but it does offer you the chance to win a lot of free play at the casinos and as long as you meet the wagering requirements for the bonus money you can withdraw it.

Not all tournaments pay bonus money. In fact the biggest ever online tournament to date – The Grand Slam of Slots was free to enter and featured a prize pool of £1,400,000 with a £1,000,000 first place prize. This goes to show just how profitable freeroll tournament can be.

What are Slot Tournaments

Before you enter any slot machine tournament it is important to understand how they work. While there are a lot of variations the basic principals remain the same for most tournaments both offline and online. The tournament starts with buy-ins. This means that you pay an entry fee to join the tournament and have a shot at winning. Some tournaments are free and others are comped in which case the casino is essentially paying the buy-in for you. The amount of players and the cost of entry will determine the prize pool.

The prize pool is distributed to the winners. In a lot of tournaments the casino will keep part of the prize pool which is how they make money from running the tournaments. It is always worth checking on the prize pool distribution before you enter a tournament.

Once all players have paid their buy-in the tournament can start. In general each player receives a set amount of credits to play with. All of the players then sit at a slot machine and get a certain amount of time to play. This tends to be quite a sight as all of the players are hitting the spin button as fast as possible to get the maximum amount of spins in the set time frame.

When the play time is over the winner is the player with the highest amount of credits on their machine. The places are also determined by the amount of credits on the machines. It is worth noting that you do not win the amount of credits that you have on the machine you win the prizes according to the tournament payout schedule.

Some of the bigger tournaments take place over a longer period of time with many smaller tournaments leading to a final round where the big money is won. In these tournaments you generally need to place high in the rankings in the smaller tournaments to move on to the next stage. The advantage of this style of tournament is that you tend to get much bigger prize pools.

The prizes are not always for the biggest scores. In some cases you will find that the tournaments also award prizes for the worst score. There are many different prize formats which is one of the reasons that slot tournaments are so popular.

Types of Slot Tournaments

There are two main types of slot tournaments you will find online. These are Scheduled Tournaments and Sit and Go Tournaments

Scheduled Tournaments

This is the main type of tournament and  have a fixed start time and end time. Tournaments can go for as short as five minutes or as long as a month or more You can enter and play in these tournaments any time they are open. The fact that the tournaments can go on for a month or more means they can offer big prize pools.

Sit and Go Tournaments

These tournaments do not have a fixed start time. They are open until enough players enter and then the tournaments starts. In general these tournaments run for a very short time and have a smaller number of players compared to scheduled tournaments. This leads to lower prize pools in general.

The fact that you have less players in the Sit and Go Tournaments means you have by the nature of the game a better chance of picking up a prize. If there are ten players and prizes for the top five you have a 50% chance of at least winning something.

Here find some of the best tournaments to enjoy at Best UK Casinos and try your luck to be the winner by competing others.