Why play in tournament poker? Say you are good enough to make a living playing cash games, especially with the all day, all night, every day and every night availability of online poker rooms to give you action. If you are making a living playing in poker games already, why would you want to commit hours and hours to online tournaments, or even more stressful, travel to a casino and do nothing but play poker for up to ten hours a day or more? The answer varies for many, depending on a person’s individual motivation, but one of the more consistent themes is because tournament poker is not JUST about the money. There is plenty of money to be made playing tournament poker, although in many cases you have to either win the event outright or finish in the money to get paid. Many a tournament player bemoans their fate for finishing “on the bubble” which means they missed cashing (getting paid) by one position. However the other elements of tournament poker make it a lot fun. The biggest is that there is an end to tournament poker. True, a player can set himself or herself a limit in a ring game and simply stop when they hit the limit, but there is less of a feeling of a true end in that case. In a tournament you either bust out or you win. It is more of a competition, like a sporting event, in that sense. Even if you don’t win, you place. Players are ranked by how far they got, such as second place or four hundred and thirty third place for the big events. This allows you to measure up how you did against other players. Some of the biggest names in the poker world either only play tournaments or mostly play them, such as Chris “Jesus” Ferguson.