Tournament Play
How a freezeout structure works, and how it differs from a cash table
In a freezeout, everyone pays the same entry once, receives the same chips, and plays until they have none. The chips are not money and cannot become money.
The word freezeout describes a tournament with a single entry and no way back in. Pay once, receive a starting stack, and play until the stack is gone or the event ends.
The first thing to be clear about is what the chips are. A tournament chip is a scorekeeping token. It cannot be exchanged for cash, it cannot be removed from the table, and it has no value outside the event. This is the fundamental break from a cash game, where the chips in front of a player are the money.
That break changes everything downstream. In a cash game a player may leave at any moment and take the stack with them, and a lost stack can be replaced by buying in again. In a freezeout, neither is possible: the stack cannot be cashed and it cannot be replaced.
Elimination therefore has real weight. Losing all the chips ends participation entirely, which makes survival a consideration in its own right rather than merely an accounting outcome. Two players holding identical hands can correctly play them differently depending on their stacks.
The structure also imposes a clock. Blind levels rise on a fixed schedule, so the cost of playing a round increases whether or not anyone at the table is winning. A stack that is untouched still shrinks in relative terms as the levels climb.
Because chips only ever move between players and never enter or leave the event, the total in play is constant. As the field shrinks, the average stack rises mechanically, and a stack that was comfortable at the start becomes short without ever having lost a chip.
Variants adjust these constraints deliberately. A rebuy format permits additional purchases during a defined early period. A re-entry format allows a fresh entry after elimination within a window. Both loosen the freezeout's central constraint, and both are stated in the structure sheet before play.
The structure sheet is the thing to read. Starting stack, level length, the blind schedule and the rules on additional entries together determine what kind of event it is, far more than the name on the board does.