The Festival in Tallinn: Team Poker Tournament Rules
The Festival Author
July 6, 2022 · 4 minutes to read

- A team consists minimum of 3 players and a maximum of 6 players, these players shall be registered pre-tournament start to the Tournament Director for this tournament.
- One of the team members shall be the team captain who will handle all communication with TD regarding tournament flow, ruling, and so on. The team captain can’t be changed once the tournament has started unless TD approves.
- Each team will have 3 stacks with 10k chips from the start.
- If a team member (from a 3-member team) drops out in play, then that stack will blind off as usual. If you bust a stack the team can’t hold that seat.
- When we break down to two tables and if one team has 3 live stacks the stack from the table that was broken will either:
- be removed from play for one level
- shared amongst the other two stacks
- added, entirely, to one of the other stacks
- All options above are decided by the team captain with TD’s supervision.
Tactics
- At the beginning of each level, for two minutes, by TDs announcement, the teams are allowed to discuss tactics. The tournament clock will be paused, and the TD will time the 2-minute break.
- During tournament play, no tactical discussions are allowed.
- During the 2-minute break, each team has the right to move 10% (no more no less, rounding to the lower amount) from one stack (sugardaddy) to another stack (golddigger). If a move/transaction is to be done, the team captain must announce this to the TD before it happens. The TD will then announce this for all remaining players and oversee that a dealer calculates the 10% that will be moved to a new stack. The distribution of the chips will be handled by the TD.
- During the 2-minute break, team members are allowed to be swapped between stacks/tables. This doesn´t have to be announced by the TD but the new player needs to be seated whilst the cards are getting dealt, as per our rules – before the second card is handed to the seat.
Time Out
- Each team captain will receive 2 time-out cards that can be used during play. When a team member shouts out “TIME OUT” it stands and can´t be retracted. The Dealer will then call the TD to the actual table. All play on all tables is immediately paused as well as the tournament clock.
- The relevant team captain will then hand over one of the time-out cards to the TD and that team, only that team, is then allowed to a 60-second pow-wow. This will be timed by the TD.
Before the 60 seconds ends, the actual team needs to have acted on the actual table or else the hand will be considered dead. All play on all tables will then continue. - However, if the relevant team doesn´t have any time-out cards left to hand over to the TD the team will issue the team a warning, if this is repeated on multiple occasions then a penalty will be issued by the TD. It could be to remove x % of an existing stack and distribute it to other players on the table, it could be sitting out x levels or 20 push-ups. This is entirely up to the TD to decide.
- The teams will receive 2 additional Time out cards when the tournament is down to 2 tables.
Number of Players per Table
- The number of seats per table is decided by the number of registered teams. As soon as possible we will break tables but understand that it can take some time since we need to make sure that team members are seated across the remaining tables. If there is a clash then player/stack transfer will be done.
- Once we’re down to the Master Table the teams are allowed to swap players when they have the dealer button.
Remember, if a team behaves in such a manner that it hurts the intended integrity of the game or just behaves badly towards other teams the TD can and will ultimately disqualify a team with no refund of the buy-in.
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