Multi table tournaments are a form of poker which involves hundreds if not thousands of poker players all playing simultaneously across a number of tables online. Poker room software will regularly move players to different tables when participants have been knocked out and each MTT will continue until a single player retains all the chips at the end of the tournament.

Usually in large MTT’s the payout starts when you reach the final 10% of players and the prize will gradually in increase as you get to the winner. So provided that you manage to finish in approximately the top 10% of players, you should get a payout.

Probably the most famous MTT is the World Series of Poker which costs several thousands of dollars to enter (although there is no shortage of players). In 2009 there were 6,494 entrants and the winner Darvin Moon picked up a cool $8,546,435 winner’s cheque.

Texas Hold ’em MTT’s are generally the largest MTT’s in poker simply because Texas Hold ’em is currently the most popular form of poker in the world today, so competition amongst MTT players is fierce. There are regular online multi table tournaments with varying buy-in levels. Unsurprisingly the MTT’s that are the cheapest to enter will typically include the highest volume of players. In fact many online poker sites offer freeroll (free to play) MTT’s which can sometimes involve a real money prize or more commonly will offer the winner or the top finishing players an entry into a “satellite tournament” or tournament that other players have actually paid to enter and will involve some form of cash prize or prize incentive. These MTT freerolls can be tempting to enter, particularly for beginners, but the odds of finishing with a top placing in a field of 9,000 for the popular PokerStars daily Texas Hold’em MTT freerolls for instance are not high and the amount of time it will take to actually complete the tournament with such a large field is not a good return on investment in terms of your own poker playing time in the opinion of most.

Satellite tournaments are MTT’s that cost a relatively low fee to buy-in and will allow you to qualify for big multi table tournaments. For example, there may be a tournament that you would like to play in but the buy-in is too steep, say $1,000. There may be a satellite tournament on offer that costs $50 to enter and the top finishers will qualify for the $1,000 buy-in event free of charge. It is worth looking out for these paid satellite events as they can provide pretty good value and a challenging level of play. In fact, the majority of players that play in the World Series of Poker now do so by qualifying via a multi table satellite event.