Rebuy Tournament Strategy
Jon Eaton
March 1st, 2005
One of the most common questions people have when it comes to tournament poker is how to play a no-limit rebuy tournament. I’ve seen numerous posts on rec.gambling.poker about the topic, and a lot of people still don’t grasp all the ideas and concepts behind this style of tournament.
First of all, before you get started, find out the rules-there are rebuy events with unlimited rebuys and some with a limited number. There are add-ons and double add-ons, and you should know what all you can do before you start playing.
Now, how much should you bring? If you have a deep bankroll, then rebuying is to your advantage, especially if you are generally a better player than the field. I will average spending at least four to five rebuys every event, sometimes less (it’s nice on that rare occasion where a single rebuy does it) and sometimes far more.
If you plan on doing the add-on, of course you should make sure you have enough cash for that as well. Typically then, you will need a minimum of about five to six-times the size of the buy-in to cover all rebuys and add-ons.
The way you actually play a rebuy event can be totally different from someone else. But remember this-the goal is to generate a lot of chips for you and hopefully for your bad opponents. Every chip they accumulate is good news for you, since you now can win that from them later.
With this in mind, I will often times play a rebuy tournament, especially of low-stakes like a $5 or $10 on Pokerstars, and I will play aggressively-in fact, I’ll play maniacally. I will move all-in preflop sometimes all the way through the rebuy portion of the event.
The ideal strategy is to develop a real loose image and make it pay off. What you do is try and move all-in with weak hands in good situations-say you have two complete rags, but you know your opponent has just overcards. In this case, even 23o will win 38% of the time and you can play it. Yes, I said play the worst possible hand heads up for all your chips!
This is obviously in direct contrast with your normal style of playing tight. When you move all-in with three high, you send a powerful message to your opponents-I am a moron and I will move in with any two cards. No, that’s not the truth, but that’s what they see it as.
Once you’ve either built up a big stack with maniacal play (sometimes I will put my table on tilt, winning pot after pot with absolute garbage hands) or developed a good table image, you can tighten your game up. Your opponents won’t be so quick to notice, unless you remain dormant for too long.
When this happens and I’m waiting it out for a big hand to get action with, I will start to play the same way I was before again just to remind everyone that I am going to move my money in with no hand at all. Just to make sure they don’t forget that.
Then, two minutes later, I pick up pocket aces. Ahh, so now I will get a few callers-and hopefully, win a monster pot. Obviously, the more action you get the less likely you are to win, but you should never discourage action during a rebuy period! You want your opponents calling with those borderline hands.
The reason this strategy works is rather simple. You have enough to spend here that you can justify spending on average of five to ten times the buy-in if you can win this event often enough to bring in positive EV. So, when you lose your buy-in (sometimes you can rebuy immediately, so you might lose two whole buy-ins) with rags, your opponents will start to call you with lesser hands.
So when you get AK and move all-in, your opponent will be quicker to call with A8 and pocket 4’s and QJ. Sure, not all those hands you are strong against, but you’re getting calls that are good for your bottom line.
Another reason this strategy can work is simple-if you put yourself in good spots, you’ll win big pots with big gambles. Since this is a rebuy event, you should be playing more like a cash-game and taking good odds bets. For instance, if you hold pocket 2’s and there’s seven players all-in for 3,000 chips apiece, and you have exactly 3,000, you should call!
You’re getting better than 7-to-1 odds to call, and you’re about that to flop a set, let alone get one by the river. Here, you would need just 4-1 odds to make the call, since that is the odds roughly to hit a set by the river, but the higher the pot-odds, the better! In fact, you can call here sometimes with any two suited cards.
So, basically what you need to do is forget about the fact that your hand is weak. Forget about the fact that you’ve built up a so-so stack with one all-in victory. Remember that even if you lose the pot, the chips are in play-and you can win them back. Be aggressive but be cautious-you can bet with anything, but don’t be so quick to call with anything. Play your standard no-limit cash game against raises and bets and you’ll do just fine.
Hopefully the next time you enter a rebuy event, my advice helps you build a big stack. And for those who play on Pokerstars, shoot for around 12k-15k by the first break at least. That way, you’ll have around 100 big blinds after the break. The more chips, the merrier, though!
