Finding the right kind of tournament can be like finding a new suit. You want to find one that fits your style of play and bankroll the best. The three main things you want to look at first would be the buy in cost, the amount of players, and if there are re-buys or not. I myself try to avoid tournaments that offer re-buys, for some reason I just don’t like them. Then again some other players love being able to re-buy in a tournament again.
Other things you may want to think about when entering a tournament would be the amount of chips you start with and how fast the blinds go up. Usually its better to play in tournaments where the blinds go up slow and they give you more chips to start with. If the blinds move up to fast and you don’t start with very many chips you can be forced into playing worse hands just because the size of the blinds compared to your stack size.
If you never have player a tournament before I would suggest that you start with a freeroll tournament (discussed in the next chapter) or a tournament with a small buy in. A tournament with an entry fee of a buck or 2 would be fine. This way you can see how tournaments run and how the prize payouts work. By entering a low cost tournament you can learn a lot without risking very much at all.
After you get use to the workings of a poker tournament you will probably want to start playing in games with bigger buy-ins. Just be prepared for bigger swings in your bankroll playing in tournaments compared to ring games. For the most part only the top 10% of players in tournament will win any money, its possible to miss making it into the money for extended periods of time. If you have a set poker bankroll I wouldn’t play in a tournament that costs more than one 20th of your bankroll.
You should also pay attention to the amount of players in a tournament. Usually you have better odds of winning a good chunk of money when there are only 100 to 200 players. This is compared to a tournament that has 500 to 1000 entry’s or more! Also remember to check if the tournament has re-buys or not. If you play in a tournament with re-buys you should be willing to re-buy or 2 or 3 times, a lot of other players will do it and you need to keep the field even. When the tournament offers re-buys its kind of like playing in a tournament with more people because it takes longer to knock people out when they have to option to buy more chips.
After looking at all the factors mention above and trying out a few tournaments you should be able to find the kind of tourneys you like to play in. You may also want to look for tournaments that have guaranteed prize pools or added funds. These tournaments can offer better returns on your invested money. A situation when the prize pool is larger than the amount of entry fees is called positive expectation. This is something you should look for to get the most value for your tournament dollar.
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