Find the Best Poker Tournaments with the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar
With literally thousands of online poker tournaments available each week, it can be difficult to choose which tournaments you want to play. But finding the poker tournaments that most suit your style and strengths is crucial for a successful strategy.
So, at PokerNews, we’ve made things simple for you. Search thousands of online poker tournaments, filtering by site, buy-in level, game type and start time and easily find your next opportunity with the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar.
What is the PokerNews Online Poker Tournament Calendar?
Our Online Tournament Calendar is a useful poker tool that you can use to see all tournaments from the four main online poker sites.
It’s not just one static list, though. Our calendar’s dynamic functionality allows you to filter the tournaments you see. If you only play on PokerStars, you can filter the calendar so that it only shows PokerStars tournaments. If you’re looking to play online poker freerolls, you can set the calendar’s filters to only show freerolls. Find out more about how our Online Tournament Calendar works below.
Why use the PokerNews Online Poker Tournament Calendar?
Poker is all about fine margins and trying to find any edge you can, no matter how small, in order to give yourself the best possible chance of winning. Playing the right tournaments that are suited for your style of play, experience, bankroll etc. is crucial in becoming a successful poker player.
So with our Online Tournament Calendar, you can use it to schedule and plan the tournaments that you want to play. Tailor your agenda and quickly identify the most-suited online poker tournaments to play that will give you the best chance to become a successful, profitable poker player.
How to use the Online Tournament Calendar
To use our Online Tournament Calendar to find poker tournaments, go to the widget above and set the filters to only see tournaments within your pre-set requirements. You can set multiple filters in one go to narrow down the results and find the exact tournaments that are best suited to your play and strategy.
Here are specific examples of how you can use the calendar:
You only play Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) > Set the Online Tournament Calendar filters to only show PLO tournaments
You want to find freerolls and tournaments with a buy-in of less than $5 > Set the Online Tournament Calendar buy-in slider to a maximum of $5.
You want to find NLH tournaments on PokerStars with an exact buy-in of $100 > Set the Online Tournament Calendar brand filter to PokerStars, set the game type to NLH and set the minimum buy-in maximum buy-in to $100 using the buy-in slider.
What are online poker freerolls (and why you should play them)?
What are poker freeroll tournaments?
Online poker freerolls are poker tournaments that don’t cost any money to enter. That’s not to say that anyone can join and play - some freerolls will be protected by passwords or require tickets for entry - but they will always be free to enter. To obtain a password or ticket, players might have to play a certain amount of poker on the site or achieve goals that are rewarded with freeroll entries.
Why you should play freeroll poker tournaments
Zero riskThere’s a well-known saying that anything that seems too good to be true probably is, and this is even more true when it comes to money. But with poker freerolls, there is no catch, no hidden fees and ultimately, absolutely no risk. Your only investment is time. Therefore, freeroll poker tournaments provide the perfect opportunity to win money for free without risking any of your bankroll on entry.
Experience If you’re new to poker or online poker tournaments, freerolls are a great way to gain experience. They allow you to get a feel for what competitive, real-money online poker tournaments are about without needing to pay for the experience. Freerolls can also act as a good introduction into the structure of tournaments and how they work.
Experiment
Given the environment of freerolls, they provide the ideal situation to try out different poker strategies and experiment with your play. For instance, let’s say that you have identified you’re opening too wide from under the gun. As a result, you look into opening ranges for under the gun with an exploitative style. You might be used to adopting a GTO strategy and want to nail down the UTG open-raising range while using an exploitative strategy. Freerolls are the perfect way to practice this play and learn how to correctly apply exploitative play for this position.
Play online poker freerolls
You can play online poker freerolls at all the four main poker sites; PokerStars, 888poker, PartyPokerand GGPoker. All these sites offer daily freerolls, as well as higher prize pool tournaments for VIPs and players who hit a certain metric - for instance make one deposit in a week.
While prize pools vary in terms of the amount of money offered, sites sometimes also offer tournament tickets for higher-value tournaments. Find a full list of the freerolls available to play online using the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar (at the top of the page).
How to find online poker freeroll tournaments
It’s simple to find online poker freeroll tournaments. Just use our Online Tournament Calendar and set the filter to ‘Freerolls’ to see all the upcoming online freerolls. Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of how to do this so you can find and play every freeroll tournament available.
Step 1 - Access the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar
You can also access the full calendar at the top of this page.
Step 2 - Set your filters
Identify the filter that says ‘Buy in.’ Set that filter to $0 and apply any other that you might want (for instance if you only play on PokerStars you might want to select ‘PokerStars’ from the ‘Brand’ filter to only show PokerStars tournaments).
Step 3 - Find freeroll tournaments
Select ‘Apply’ and then browse the resulting list of freeroll tournaments that meet your pre-set filter requirements. Click ‘Play’ to then take you directly to the operator/brand’s website. Here the best freerolls
What are online poker satellites (and why you should play them)?
What are satellite tournaments in poker?
Satellite tournaments in poker are smaller buy-in tournaments where instead of standard cash payouts, players can win tickets to higher buy-in tournaments. Cash is sometimes involved in the payout structure of tournaments, but typically you’ll just be playing for entry to a larger tournament.
Online satellite tournament poker strategy
The strategy for online satellite tournaments is vastly different to regular tournaments. This is down to the Independent Chip Model (ICM), which attributes a monetary value based on the tournament payout structure and a player’s current chip stack.
With the flat payout structure in a satellite meaning players either win or do not win a ticket, there’s no benefit for finishing higher in the money than other players. You get the same prize either way. So, there is no incentive to try to win satellites - only to finish inside the bubble.
Based on this dynamic, here are five satellite tournament strategy tips in poker.
| No. | Tip | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tighten open ranges | You want to try to avoid high variance spots in satellites. This means playing tighter preflop, as you don’t want to be flipping for your tournament life if you can help it. Of course, if your stack is low or you have a premium hand, sometimes you have to shove, but in general, tighten up and exploit your opportunities carefully. |
| 2 | Shove, don’t call all-ins | Given the ICM implications involved, fold equity is often a significant dynamic in a hand. It refers to the chance of getting your opponent/s to fold their hand when you raise. Because of this, shoves have a far greater impact, but alternatively, you should put more consideration into the hands you’re calling all-ins with. |
| 3 | Adjust for bubble ICM | Bubbling in a standard tournament usually means you lose out on cashing for a little bit more than the tournament buy-in. In satellites, bubbling will mean losing out on far more than just 1.5 or 2x the buy-in. Instead, you’re losing out on a tournament ticket worth considerably more than the satellite buy-in, so you must adjust accordingly around the bubble and do everything you can to make the money and not risk your stack unnecessarily. |
| 4 | Quit while you're ahead | Following on from the previous tip, if you have a very large stack in a satellite and you’re nearing the bubble, it might be worth quitting while you’re ahead. By this, we mean folding every hand until you reach the money, providing your chip stack is large enough to be able to fold your way through the bubble. Even with AA, why bother risking a near-guaranteed tournament ticket when you’ll lose with aces around one in every five times you pick up that hand? |
| 5 | Middle stacks most exploitable | When you or your opponent has a middle stack size in the field, it’s worth noting that these players are the most exploitable. Shorter stacks have less to lose as they know they cannot afford to fold their way to the bubble. Whereas, the larger stacks are more comfortable calling all-ins to smaller stacks as it won’t bust them if they lose. For the middle stack sizes, they don’t have the chip stack to risk calling all-ins without premium hands, but they aren’t under so much pressure to be active to further build a chip stack, This makes them exploitable when you have a big stack, and means you need to tighten up when you are a middle stack. |
How to play online poker satellite tournaments?
Playing online poker satellite tournaments is simple thanks to our Online Tournament Calendar. Now, regardless of whether you play on PokerStars, 888poker, GGPoker or PartyPoker, you can search and find the main satellites that are available for you to play.
Once you’ve found the ones you want to enter, click on the ‘Play’ button and you’ll go straight to the poker site offering the satellite. You no longer have to waste time browsing all four sites searching for the best satellites. Find all the best satellite opportunities in one convenient place with our Online Tournament Calendar.
How to satellite into the World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker is the most famous poker series in the world. Each year, the biggest, best and most famous poker players from around the world descend on Las Vegas for seven weeks to battle it out in all different types of live poker tournaments. But the beauty of the World Series is the opportunity it gives amatuer, recreational players an opportunity to play with their poker heroes and potentially win life-changing sums of money.
Buy-ins start from $400, so for many micro, low and medium-stakes players, so satellites are the only viable way to play the WSOP for many players. And fortunately, there are many opportunities for players to win entry to a WSOP event through the various satellites available. The WSOP.com itself offers numerous satellites to WSOP events, including the World Series of Poker Main Event. Satellites are also available on GGPoker to qualify for various WSOP events as well.
What are the online Sunday poker tournaments (and why you should play them)?
Online Sunday poker tournaments are tournaments that happen throughout the final day of the week that are unique to Sundays and often have larger buy-ins.
If there’s one negative to playing tournament poker, it’s that it’s not something that you can pick up, put down and play for just 20 minutes here or there. There are exceptions, but if you’re multi-tabling a few tournaments and having a proper poker session, you need to commit a few hours of your day. This makes it more difficult for players with a 9-5 job to play extensively during the week, which is partially the reason why Sunday has been adopted by many of the main sites to host the biggest and best poker tournaments of the week.
Why play online Sunday poker tournaments?
Sundays are the highlight of the poker week. Tournaments with huge player fields and lot of chances to win big money make it a fun day to grind online poker. If you’re going to play poker one day of the week, make it a Sunday - there are some tournaments, such as the PokerStars Sunday Million, that you don’t want to miss!
Here’s why you should play Sunday tournaments:
- Play with the pros - We aren’t the only ones that think Sundays are huge in online poker. Pro players and Twitch streamers like Lex Veldhuis, Ben ‘Spraggy’ Spragg and Fintan ‘EasyWithAces’ Hand all capitalize on Sundays by filming longer streams that typically result in their largest views of the week. So, while many pros play throughout the week, you can be pretty sure that your favorite online players will turn up on a Sunday. Why not take the chance to join and face off with them at the tables?
- Larger payouts - Poker sites are fully aware of the popularity of Sundays, and they feed into this excitement by offering unique tournaments with larger prize pools. The PokerStars Sunday Million, for instance, has a weekly guarantee of $1 million from a buy-in of just $109. Its 15th anniversary special even paid $1.5 million for first place alone. These larger guarantee tournaments are frequent throughout Sundays, but you’ll struggle to find any other tournaments that are comparable throughout the rest of the week.
- Larger player pools - The main benefit of more players entering a tournament is the prize pool is larger, but this isn’t the only benefit. Larger player pools give you a chance to play in truly unique and special tournaments, with sometimes tens of thousands of players competing. While the tournament fundamentals stay the same, the dynamic of having thousands of other players competing in the same tournament makes for a special experience. What’s more, if the tournament is a bounty builder, more players make for some huge bounty spots.
- More tournaments to play - As mentioned, it’s not just one or two special tournaments. Sundays are packed full of a whole schedule of different featured poker tournaments that you won’t find any other day. Whether you’re looking for the big, most popular ones or just some unique micro-stakes tournaments, our Online Tournament Calendar can efficiently help you to identify the ones you want to play so you can make the most of your poker Sundays.
Play online poker tournaments now
It’s safe to say that there are online poker tournaments for every type of player - the tricky part is finding the best ones out of the thousands available across all the main sites each week. Our Online Tournament Calendar is the perfect solution, so you can confidently play the tournaments suited to your game and start playing poker now.
If you need a site to play at, are interested in finding a new place to play poker or want to take advantage of some impressive sign-up bonuses, browse the offers below.
PokerNews’ Online Tournament Calendar FAQs
What is the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar?
The PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar is a useful tool that you can use to help you find the tournaments you most want to play. You can use specific filters to tailor your tournament search to your buy-in level, game type, the site you play on, type of tournament, region and prize pool. Our Online Tournament Calendar shows all the main poker tournaments for the four primary poker sites - PokerStars, 888poker, GGPoker and PartyPoker.
Why use the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar?
The PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar allows you to instantly find specific tournaments across four main poker sites - PokerStars, 888poker, GGPoker and PartyPoker. Why waste time browsing four different clients’ tournament lobbies when you can use our Online Tournament Calendar to find tournaments based on your buy-in, game type and regional preferences?
Is the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar free to use?
Yes, our Online Tournament Calendar is free for anyone to use. Simply visit this page and use the calendar at the top to set your filters to your own tournament preferences.
Can I search for PokerStars tournaments with the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar?
Yes, you can search for various different PokerStars tournaments while using our Online Tournament Calendar.
Can I search for freerolls using the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar?
Yes, you can search for freeroll poker tournaments at PokerStars, 888poker, GGPoker and PartyPoker.
Can I search for satellites using the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar?
Yes, you can search for satellite poker tournaments for various different tournaments across the four main poker sites.
Will more poker sites be added to the PokerNews Online Tournament Calendar?
Yes, we will be looking into adding more poker sites to our Online Tournament Calendar in the future.