Online Tournament Credit Crunch Busting | Poker Strategy

During a recession, we know that you can't afford to splash around at the tables as much as you would like to, and big money scores are needed more than ever. We can't help you get lucky at the tables, but we can give you some credit crunch busting tips to get the most out of the online tournament tables, and help you win more when you are winning and lose less when you are losing:

SNG Credit Crunch Busting

The golden rule is simple with getting added value in SNGs – play at Pokerstars.net.Not only do SNG specialists tend to benefit the most from the excellent VIP programme at

Pokerstars.net,but the Battle of the Planets promotion makes it the only place to go.

The weekly leader board for SNG players is tiered into 8 groups dependent on stakes and is then split into two groups, one for casual players and the other for big volume players. Put simply, you get big cash bonuses for running well at the tables and up to $10,000 per stake level is catered for each week and all you have to do is win, which we are sure was the plan anyway.

Not only that, but the best performers overall in a week qualify for a $50,000 freeroll, the Battle of the Planets Triple Shootout. This triple shootout is exactly the sort of low field, high prize money tournament MTT players dream of and is not to be sniffed at. If you bear in mind you will be (Hopefully) winning money and making the most of the VIP system anyway, it's a no brainer.

Also one to keep an eye out for is SNG Madness which occasionally pops up over weekends at Full Tilt Poker. This is a much more condensed, faster and madder version of an SNG leader board and pays out based on two hour blocks of SNG Madness.

MTT Credit Crunch Busting

As a tournament specialist you want value, you are looking for is any event which potentially offers you a much better payout than is normal for the stakes and field size you are playing. What we are talking about here are guarantees, money added and freeroll tournaments

The great thing about guaranteed tournaments is that every now and then you get an overlay, which is when the guarantee isn't met and the poker room puts up the difference, giving you a much easier route to a big score. Pokerstars.net stick out for this and have the most (and biggest) guarantees anywhere online, with a regular $1.5 million guaranteed every Sunday and $80,000 guaranteed every day in a $50 tournament, which is amazing. The semi-regular $2 million guaranteed events on iPoker often have an overlay, so watch out for them too. Whats more, most of the major online festivals (Pokerstars.net SCOOP & WCOOP and the Full Tilt Poker FTOPS) have big guarantees that are worth keeping an eye on for overlays.

Money added tournaments are much harder to come by, but a little investigation and keeping an eye on Pokernews can pay dividends.

Finally there is no better value than a tournament where you invest nothing at all, the freeroll tournament. Usually a freeroll consists of about 10,000 players trying to win a $30 first prize, but when you sign up to a poker room via UK.Pokernews you become eligible for big money, low number of entrants freeroll tournaments.

Check out our freeroll section to get an idea of how lucrative signing up to a poker room with Pokernews can be, and don't forget that when you sign up via us, you are eligible for these tournaments for life. We literally have at least one a day with a minimum prize pool of $500, so what are you waiting for?

Reducing the Cost of Tournament Poker

Tournament poker is a high variance affair, you can often go weeks, months or even longer without a big score, which can play havoc on your bankroll. This is why we have introduced ChipMeUp into the Pokernews family. ChipMeUp allows you to reduce the variance in online poker as well as take shots at bigger games at no cost to yourself, by selling percentages of yourself to likeminded players. You can also use the service to buy chunks of other big name players, such as Pokernews own Tony G.