Online casinos normally feature games where you challenge the casino itself and not other players, meaning that your goal is to beat the casino at its own game. However, this does not mean you are not competing with other players. Competition is something that is inherent in all of us and drives us towards a certain goal to prove our success. Casino sites take advantage of this and organize tournaments to provide a friendly competitive environment.
These events are beneficial for casinos as they encourage players to play longer and harder, but they can also be extremely rewarding for you if you know how they work. Here, we will explain how you can make the most out of casino tournaments.
Basic Tournament Mechanics
It’s best to start with the basics of what casino tourneys are and how they work:
- A tournament is an event organized by the casino for a particular game or category of games (sometimes, they are organized by the game developers themselves – Pragmatic Play’s Drops & Wins is a good example).
- This event can be daily, weekly, or monthly. In any case, it will have a theme (for example, Halloween) and it will be clearly stated which games it covers. These games are usually slot machines, but games such as roulette, blackjack, and poker can also be included.
- Each tournament has a prize pool, a leaderboard, and strict rules on how points are earned. The goal of the participants is to earn points (or collect chips) by playing the games included in the event, improve their ranking, and get a share of the prize pool.
So, you do what you always do – play games. But in games other than poker and blackjack, your opponents are not other players. You are still playing against the casino, only this time you have an additional goal: to score as many points as possible. Poker and blackjack tournaments are rarer and are more common in well-known online casinos. Tournaments for slots and other table games can be found in almost every casino.
Types of Casino Tournaments
In this context, we can identify the main types of casino tourneys as follows:
- Poker: Players play against each other in virtual rooms. The goal is almost always to be the player who holds the most chips. At the end of the event, the top 10 is determined according to the chip counts. Entering poker tourneys requires a buy-in (you have to pay a certain amount of money).
- Blackjack: In these events, too, players compete against each other: each player takes the role of the dealer in turn. The goal is to win as many chips as possible during a certain number of hands. Once again, they usually require a buy-in.
- Slot: The most common type of casino tournament. They are usually time-based, meaning that the goal is to earn the most points possible over a certain period of time (say, a week). Points can be earned through win amounts or bet amounts.
- Roulette: They are based on the same system as slot tourneys but are almost always organized for live roulette. Participants earn points based on win or bet amounts and try to improve their ranking. They are usually daily or weekly events.
Note that this list is not ‘fixed’. Technically, a tournament can be organized for any game type in an online casino, but casinos focus on popular games for understandable reasons. To see more examples, you can complete Mr Bet login and check out the current “tournaments” page.
How to Participate in a Casino Tournament?
Participating in tourneys at online casinos used to require payment back in the early 2000s. For example, even slot tournaments required the purchase of a ‘ticket’, the price of which varied from casino to casino. Nowadays, payment is only required for poker and blackjack events. This is understandable, as the prize pool for these games includes buy-in payments (although there are organizations, such as the MFA, where buy-ins are used for social purposes).
However, there is no such requirement for slots, roulette, or any other game. You don’t have to buy a ticket or make a payment under any name. You don’t even need to apply: when you start playing any game that falls under the scope of a tournament, you also become a part of that event. In other words, it is possible to join a tournament without even realizing it. Once you join, all you have to do is keep playing until the event ends.
How to Earn Points in a Casino Tournament?
We mentioned above that the main purpose of these events is to increase your ranking by earning points. So, how does this work and what exactly do you need to do to earn points? We can say that there are three different rule systems in this regard:
- Chip-based points system,
- Win-based points system,
- Bet-based points system.
The chip-based system is only used in tournaments for poker, blackjack and other card games. The calculation is quite simple: the more chips you hold, the higher your ranking. In tournaments for other games, either win-based or bet-based scoring is used.
Bet-based scoring is the more common of the two. As the name suggests, the points you earn are determined by the amount of bets you place in a game. It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose in the game. For example, you earn 1 point for every 10 PLN bet, and even if you lose that bet, your score is not affected. This system can be a serious advantage for players with a large bankroll: they can earn points simply by placing big bets.
Win-based scoring is the opposite. Not the bet amounts, but the payout amounts you win in the game are taken into account. For example, if you get paid 100 coins in the game, you earn 1 point. This is a fairer system because it is possible to rise in the ranking regardless of your budget. All you need is to be lucky enough to win the game.
At the end of the tournament, the top 10 players are determined according to the number of points/chips, and the money in the prize pool is divided among them. It should be noted that this is not a fixed practice. Some casinos split the prize money only between the top 3 players. Others give a small share to everyone in the top 100. It is best to read the tournament rules for prize sharing, as there is no generalized practice.
Join a Tournament Today!
Don’t hesitate to join a casino tournament even if you are a beginner. You don’t need any experience with luck-based games (slots, roulette, keno, keno, bingo, etc.) and the events organized for these games will make your experience more enjoyable: you keep doing what you’ve always done and get a chance to win an additional prize. However, once you join, we strongly recommend that you keep playing until the end of the event, as you will not be able to catch up with other players if you take too many breaks. We wish you all the best of luck!
