A Guide to Tournaments in Online Casinos + Best Casinos List

It is not a secret that competition among online casinos is pretty tough nowadays, so they act accordingly pumping up their marketing budgets.

Full list of online casinos with tournaments

As a result, online casino players are provided with many different promotions in online casinos, which mainly consist of:

• VIP programs

• Bonuses

• Races

• Tournaments

In this article, we are going to talk about tournaments in online casinos as one of the most versatile types of promotions so far. Jumping forward, some players are confused about them due to this versatility (too many different kinds of them).

How do Tournaments in online casinos work?

As I have said before, tournaments could be very different depending on a particular online casino, or, to be more precise, their marketing team’s strategies. However, the one thing unites them all “They are designed as a marketing tool to incentivize casino players to gamble more, and, as a reward, players can expect some prizes to be given”.

Though there are some peculiarities that distinguish tournaments among other promos in online casinos:

• Tournaments have been created to make the gambling experience more diverse allowing players not only to gamble against an online casino but against one another as well.

• Players are competing with each other.

• Tournaments usually last for a short period of time (unlike races which could go on even for months).

• Participants are supposed to play in some casino games (slots or classic casino games, or even both). And based on their results, the winners are going to be named.

• There is a prize pool at stake.

• Players need to register in tournament manually (not automatically as with races) in order to participate.

• Most of the time casino players have to risk some extra money to take part in tournaments, but they could be free as well.

I hope you have gotten at least a basic idea on what tournaments actually are. However, further, in the article, we will talk about different types of tournaments which will probably make things more clear.

Kinds of Tournaments in online casinos

I would like to notice that it is not an ultimate list of tournaments in online casinos because you can come across too many bizarre and diverse instances of them. And the whole process of creating tournaments is only limited to the marketing team’s imagination. But some patterns definitely exist, so that tournaments could be divided into groups.

Depending on how the tournament starts:

• Scheduled (start at the appointed time, no matter how many players have enrolled).

• Sit and go (start when a specific number of players have enrolled).

Depending on how the winners are determined:

• Who makes more real money bets (wagers) wins. Those are predictably most widespread tournaments since it is in online casino’s best interest to reward people for gambling more.

• Who wins more during the tournament is a winner.

Depending on how the prize pool is getting formed:

• Guaranteed minimum prize pool. Does not matter how many contributors to prize pool a tournament has, prize pool won’t be lower than some level. Therefore, sometimes an online casino needs to pay from its pocket.

• Floating prize pool size. The more players are participating, the bigger the final prize will be and vice versa.

Depending on who pays for prizes:

• Freerolls. Only an online casino contributes to the prize pool so that casino players are spared from additional spendings.

• Players have to risk extra money to take part in the tournament (pay some buy-in fee to get in).

In terms of in which games players are eligible to play:

• Slot tournaments (the most prevailing type).

• Table games tournaments (mostly blackjack and roulette).

• Mixed tournaments (all casino games are allowed).

Depending on the structure of the tournament:

• One round tournament.

• Multiple rounds which often imply some sort of elimination.

How to participate in them?

Unlike races, VIP programs and bonuses in online casinos; you have to register in tournament manually. This is quite understandable practice since online casino players often have to pay in order to contest.

Where to find out the info about available tournaments?

If an online casino has tournaments to offer, then such information can almost always be found on the top dashboard of the casino’s website. Just click on the section which is named “Tournaments” or “Contest”.

Here is how it could look like.