It’s really interesting to see everything that goes into a big poker tournament – in addition to players, cards and chips, of course. It is also quite astonishing what is attached to such an event and also how much of it has already developed into niche professions and drives many other industries. Here is an incomplete overview.
There are now many established large poker tournaments and top poker events around the world that are held on a regular basis. The largest poker tournaments are carried out by independent companies, because the monetary and organizational effort behind such events is really enormous. A bird’s eye view roughly reveals the structure of a poker tournament. The organizer of the tournament is at the top – the organizing committee is the large control center that organizes everything and bears all responsibility. This includes many customer service employees in special call centers who steer everything in the right direction and support everyone involved. By the way, there have been special service companies for a while now that can be hired by anyone,
When casinos host poker tournaments, it is usually a similarly large effort. The poker room manager works right in the middle of it, organizing the tournaments and at the same time being the know-it-all for poker issues. Very often he trains the dealers and takes care of advertising and marketing. The tournament director and all referees (also known as floorman) report to him. Floormen are found both in casinos and at independent poker tournaments. Your job is also quite extensive: You ensure that everything runs smoothly on the floor, you fill the poker tables with players, you settle conflicts and you monitor and support the dealers at the tables. They also take care of fixing technical problems around the gaming tables and supply the tables with decks of cards. If there are multiple floormen,
The right number of dealers for a tournament then has to be organized, set up and planned. Usually they work in shifts at the tables and are in direct contact with the players and exposed to all of their emotions. Obviously the poker players belong to a poker tournamentin addition, which, depending on the type of tournament, must qualify to participate. The situation is different for participation in very exclusive poker rounds with buy-ins in the seven or eight-figure range. The rule here is that players, mostly well-heeled VIPs, celebrities or poker professionals are specially nominated and personally invited. Poker players all over the world today have a good chance to prove their skills in an online or live poker tournament. There are now countless poker tournaments that do not lack participants. The field of participants in the famous World Series of Poker, for example, is a little over 293,000 players and online poker tournaments often have tens of thousands of participants.