A blackjack tournament will usually be a knockout competition played in several rounds. Each table will start with 6 or so participants, of which only one or two will proceed to the next round, the rest having been eliminated. All players will begin each round with the same number of chips, and the number of hands that will be played in each round will be pre determined; usually between 15 and 30. When the set number of hand has been played the player with the highest bankroll at that table is deemed the winner and will progress to the next round.

With each elimination round, the tables will get reshuffled, and this will usually happen between 3 and 6 times until the final table is reached. The number of rounds will depend on the number of entrants to begin with and the size of the tables.

In this way, a blackjack tournament, is very much like playing non-tournament blackjack, except that at the end of a round the chips aren't counted up for the sake of cashing out, but rather for cashing in – with a blackjack tournament you are still only competing against the dealer in terms of your hand, but whether you get to progress to the next round or not depends on how your stack fares against your fellow players'.

Most blackjack tournament prize pools are made up of the entry fees paid by the participants. Therefore, the prizes can vary greatly, as the entrance fees vary greatly also. For example, a blackjack tournament with a $10 buy-in may reward its first place winner with a $500 prize, whilst the biggest tournaments may have a buy-in of thousands which would then grant a first place prize of hundreds of thousands. The prize pool is never given entirely to the first prize place, but rather is usually spread out over at least the first 6 places.  You will find, sometimes in online blackjack venues, free roll blackjack tournament events; these are tournaments that require no entry fee but may or may not have a prize. Those that don't have a prize, are useless for anything other than improving one's game. Those that do offer a real prize though, are great opportunities to win something for nothing. Although the prizes for free roll blackjack tournaments aren't as high as for buy-in ones, it doesn't matter because it costs you nothing to enter it. For the casino, it is worthwhile to put in the price of a car, or a few thousand casino chips in order to get the extra traffic through the site, and for the player it's worthwhile because it's quite literally playing for something for nothing.