A tournament is a competition involving a relatively large number of competitors, all participating in a single sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval. Some game clubs focus on preparing members for such tournaments. Chess clubs, for instance, frequently employ similar ranking systems, chess clocks, and etiquette to those used in chess tournaments.
A competition involving multiple matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match.
These two senses are distinct. All golf tournaments meet the first definition, but while matchplay tournaments meet the second, strokeplay tournaments do not, since there are no distinct matches within the tournament. In contrast, football (soccer) leagues like the FA Premier League are tournaments in the second sense, but not the first, having matches spread across many stadia over a period of up to a year. Many tournaments meet both defintions; for example, the Wimbledon tennis championship.
A tournament-match (or tie or fixture or heat) may involve multiple game-matches (or rubbers or legs) between the competitors. For example, in the Davis Cup tennis tournament, a tie between two nations involves five rubbers between the nations' players. The team that wins the most rubbers wins the tie. In the later rounds of UEFA Champions League of football (soccer), each fixture is played over two legs. The scores of each leg are added, and the team with the higher aggregate score wins the fixture.
The 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) began on June 25, 2006 with "satellite" events, with regular play commencing on June 26 with the annual Casino Employee event, and the Tournament of Champions scheduled for June 28 and 29. Forty more events in various events including Omaha, seven-card stud and razz, plus ladies' and senior tournaments will lead up to the 10,000 USD no-limit Texas hold 'em main event starting July 28 and running through the final table on August 10.
All events will be held at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which will mark the first time that a casino other than Binion's Horseshoe (now "Binion's") will host the final table of the main event. Six days reserved for the first two rounds of play for the main event has been established by Harrah's Entertainment, which has run the annual event since its purchase from the Binion family in 2004.
The estimated first prize in the main event is $10 million. If reached, this will be the richest prize for the winner of any sports or television event in history.
2006 featured a much anticipated $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. event - the highest WSOP buy-in ever.
Main Event
The Main Event will be the biggest event and the world championship of the 2006 WSOP. The tournament will be a $10,000 No-Limit Texas Hold'em event. Due to the massive fields of the tournament, the field will be split into 4 groups of up to 2700 and play on separate days. Each of the 4 groups will play down to 800 people. The field will be whittled down to the newest world champion to be crowned on August 10. The final table of the "Main Event" will be offered live on Pay-Per-View. This will mark the first time that a poker event has been broadcast live in its entirety.