Steps tournaments are Sit and Go tournaments offered by several rooms that generally serve as a satellite system for a larger tournament, often a live event like the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. Steps tournaments work on a tiered system – if you do well in a certain step, you generally receive a ticket up to the next step; if you place in the middle, you might receive a ticket to try your current step again or perhaps a ticket to a lower step.
The Poker Stars Steps system offers a good example of how Steps tournaments work. PokerStars has 6 steps. The buy in begins at 7.50 for Step 1 and goes all the way up to $2100 for Step 6. Payouts generally work like this: the top one or two finishers in a tournament will receive a ticket to the next Step, while 3rd – 6th will receive tickets to the same step or below. For example, here’s the payout structure for Step 4 ($200+15):
1-2: Step 5 ticket
3: Step 4 ticket
4-5: Step 3 ticket
6: Step 2
As you can see from the example above, Steps tournaments tend to have fairly flat payouts, so you can cycle through the system fairly easily with lower variance than you might experience in a normal SNG tournament. The downside to Steps tournaments: you’re locked into them. Steps tickets are not redeemable (generally) for anything other than Steps tournaments, nor can they be converted into cash, tournament dollars or transferred.
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