After paying the buy-in and entry fee, all entrants are supplied with exactly the same number of chips and then assigned randomly to tables, typically with ten people on each table (although sometimes fewer than this). You can buy a seat in advance, but a tournament will always begin promptly at a predetermined time.
The basic rule is that as soon as you've lost your chips, you're out. Survivors carry on playing and the overall winner is the person who ends up with all the chips.
Tournament organisers (or tournament software) will keep the tables balanced to ensure fairness to all players. For example, with 100 entries, you'll probably get ten tables of ten. As players are eliminated, survivors will be moved around to keep the numbers seated at each table as close as possible. Once ten people have been eliminated, one whole table will be broken up to make up nine tables of ten (rather than ten tables of nine) and so on. The final table will include the last ten or so players.
Although the person who ends up with all the chips is the ultimate winner, other finalists won't go home empty-handed. Typically the top-placed 5%-10% of all entrants receive prize money, according to the order in which they exit the tournament.
Winning a satellite tournament, however, will get you free entry into a larger tournament (such as the WSOP).
Some tournaments - known as rebuy tournaments - allow you to buy more chips if you lose yours within a certain period of the start, typically during the first hour of play. Tournaments without rebuys are known as freeze-out tournaments.
Card rooms and poker websites generally offer a variety of different sized tournaments on a regular basis. The rules can change from tournament to tournament.
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