Hellkat tournaments – a Party Poker Unique Promotion
A reasonable poker player knows that SNGs (sit and go’s) are the best for bankroll–building. They provide some great value compared to just about every other tournament and cash-game format. When one plays them in the play-money version, they appear to be reasonably fast too, but as soon as you move on to real money (especially low buy-in SNGs) you hit a major bump.
It looks like people would play on for hours on end, for a mere $1-2 in prizes at the end of the tourney. While playing for 2-3 hours for something like $100-200 might make sense, doing the same for $1-2 is not the most lucrative occupation for sure.
Party Poker’s Hellkat tournaments are meant to combat this very issue. These games work on a time-limit basis, so people won’t be able to drag them on forever. This way, even if you’re one busy poker player, you’ll know exactly when the tourney ends and you’ll be able to plan everything accordingly.
There are two Hellcat tourney formats: one of them works with a fixed time-limit. Once the time allotted for the game runs out, the prize-pool is divided up among the first 3 players according to the size of their stack. The other format is a more flexible one with a little bit of suspense thrown in for good measure. There is a random time limit, meaning that the tourney will end about 10% sooner or later than it would if it were a fixed time limit one. Exactly when it ends, nobody knows.