A common technique employed by top poker rooms for promoting their tournaments is to give guaranteed prizes in the pool. For achieving this, the online poker room must ascertain that the prize pool is the same size as the guarantee given and they can ensure this by putting in more money into the pool in case there are few players signing up for the tournament. This is one of the best ways for intermediate poker star players to gain exposure to competitive poker and a host of really attractive cash prizes besides lots of promotional offers, such as free vacations, a fancy set of wheels, bonuses etc.

Thus, for a poker room hosting a USD 200 + USD 15 tournament that has a guaranteed prize pool of USD 250,000 with 3000 players signing up for the event, the guarantee is not essential because of the large number of entrants, since the prize pool would be USD 60,000 – an amount much more than the guarantee! Thus, in such a case the poker room won’t need to put in more money to their prize pool; instead, it will make a good profit from their entry fees.

But, in the event that only 800 or so players sign up for the tournament, the prize pool value would be USD 160,000 only, which would require the poker room to give a guaranteed prize pool of USD 250,000 at the very least, so they’d need to put in USD 90,000 to make up the prize pool. This type of pokerstar.com tournament represent a huge opportunity for poker tournament players since all the prizes in this type of event has prizes valued at 56% more than the average prize pool of standard tournaments.

However, usually the tournaments with guaranteed prize pools manage to attract enough players so they are not required to add more money to boost the pool value, though sometimes, a few internet poke rooms may have to set their guarantee so high that the additional amount is necessary for enhancing the prize pool For example, Empire Poker!.

Another option for intermediate poker players is to improve their gaming strategies and enter competitive poker events at a lower level to win a seat at bigger events, such as moving from Satellite tournaments to Major Tournaments! There are many online poker rooms that regularly host satellite events awarding seats to players reaching the final tables for bigger live poker tournaments (land-based events, such as the WSOP!) For example, the World Series of Poker winners for years 2003 and 2004 both started their pro careers by winning seats for this top poker event via an internet satellite tournament.

Intermediate poker players need to understand how these satellites work in order to avail the best features of playing in competitive events to reach larger prizes such as seats to coveted land-based events, though some satellites may only offer cash prizes or paid entry for another tournament. The best way to select the poker room for winning bigger prizes then is to check out if they are guaranteeing a fixed number of seats and sign up with these rooms.