No Limit Texas Hold'em, the most popular card game in the world.
In case anybody is not familiar with tournaments, here's how it works:
The buy-in is $55 per player. For that buy-in, each player gets some pre-determined amount of poker chips (everybody starts with the same amount---maybe 3,000, depends on the rules).
Each player can bet, call, or raise any amount (no limit) on every hand. You can get busted out on one hand if you go "all-in" and lose the hand to a player who has equal or more chips than you.
You play until you lose all your chips. At that point, you can either exit the tournament and look for a chica to heal your wounds
or you can rebuy (there is a one-time rebuy option). For $50, you get rebuy and get another 3,000 (or whatever it will be) in chips.
You keep playing until there is one player with all the chips.
Of each person's $55 buy-in, $50 goes into the prize pool and $5 goes to the casino (to pay for using their equipment, dealers, drinks, etc). The $50 rebuy goes all in the prize pool. So with 50 players (incl rebuys), the prize pool is $2500. Winner will usually get 40-50% of that. Not bad for a couple hours of fun.
The payout structure will usually pay top 3 places, sometimes more, depending on how many entries there are. The rule of thumb is pay 1 place for every 10 entries. So with 39 or less people, top 3 are paid. With 40-49 players, top 4 are paid, and so on. Each place get's a percentage of the total prize pool. (ex. 1st-50%, 2nd-30%, 3rd-20%)
If anybody has any questions about this, post them or PM me.