Tournament Seats
Poker online tournament players are usually assigned seats at random. Usually players pick or are given a seat card for a designated table and seat number. The tournament director plans ahead for how many tables to set up for an even distribution of players at each table.
Once the tournament is underway, players begin dropping out and this can upset the equality among tables, since the fewer the players at a table, the more often each player has to pay a blind, which keep escalating to higher levels as the tournament progresses.
In order to maintain fairness, the tournament director will shift players from tables where there are more poker players to other tables with empty seats, so that the tables remained equally balanced. Most often, the director will send a player from the fuller table who is to be next in the position that just vacated at the table with the empty seat.
Sometimes the director will simply direct whoever is to be big blind next to another table, and they can sit in any empty seat. Since this player was about to pay the big blind, there is no penalty if they sit in the next big blind seat, and if seated behind the blind, then payment might be postponed a few rounds, which is a bonus.
A player shifted from another table cannot come into the small blind. In this situation, the player must wait out a hand, then the button passes and the player can resume playing. Remember this when you’re at the casino online.
