A hybrid tournament will have a mixture of advancement from one round to the next by either winning (or being in the top 2 or 3) or some number of advancers based on total chip count across the whole field of player (maybe the top 30 or 40 chip totals as examples). A hybrid tournament can have advancers be a table winner plus X number of people across the field who had the highest chip totals without being a table winner. Their are just multiple types of combinations that can be used to determine advancers from one round to the next.
I looked at my response and it didn't look good. Most tournaments have 3, 4 or 5 rounds. There can be multiple sessions within a round. As far as I know all tournaments are elimination tournaments, otherwise it would be just a one round tournament Advancing from one round to the next is normally determined by table winner(s) format where either the 1st, 2nd or 3rd (number advancing varies by tournament or round) highest chip total at the table advance to the next round. Overall this is probably the most common format. Accumulation tournaments advance people from one round to the next based on the X number(depends on the tournament) of highest chip totals across the field. The chip accumulation will continue for subsequent rounds after the X is determined. In other words, the Xs chips will be their starting chip totals for the next round. A hybrid is some combination of the two above. It does not fit either of the above situations. You might have a tournament where the top 36 chip totals after round one advance to round 2. Then beginning with round 2 the chip totals revert to everyone having have the same amount of starting chips and only the table winner advances. This would be a hybrid format. Technically, I guess you could consider a tournament where the 2nd round will have (as an example) 48 people which would consist of 40 table winners and 8 wild card draws (or maybe the top 8 chip totals that did not win a table) to complete the field as a hybrid tournament.
Larry's examples are all correct, but for the purposes of selecting a tournament type when adding an event to the calendar, 'hybrid' refers to a tournament in which some rounds are 'top X scores out of the field advance' (accumulation) and other rounds are 'top X scores at each table advance' (elimination).
Hybrid blackjack tournaments can be very frustrating at times. - For example, where the top 6 bankrolls of the field (say 6 tables with 36 people) advance to the last table you can easily proudly finish you table as a leader, but for no use if you do not finish in the top 6 of the whole lot, therefore not reaching final table. On the same line, if at one table (out of those 6) the dealer unusually keeps busting and busting hand after hand, it might be very likely that the whole table (ALL 6 players from it) will advance to the final table, in detriment of the others 30 people ! - Well, it does not happen everyday, but theoretically it really is possible.
