Rebuy Poker Tournaments

Rebuy tournaments are one of the most popular poker games on the internet thanks in part to the massive prizepools they tend to create, especially in relation to the initial buy-in amount. There are a number of different ways to approach a rebuy tournament but listed below is the way a lot of pro players go about their business in rebuy events.

Bankroll management is important for playing rebuy tournaments and I would suggest having around 1,000 buy-ins available if you want to play rebuy’s regularly. This may seem overly excessive to players of standard freezeout tournaments, especially as around 100-200 buy-ins is usually sufficient in those, but you have to account for at least two rebuys and an add-on at the break, which means you will be spending around four buy-ins per tournament.

The jury is still out on the optimal strategy to play during the rebuy period but the general consensus is that you should be willing to gamble very early on when you and your opponents can buy back your chips. Watch any rebuy tournament online and you will see hand upon hand going all-in preflop, some open shoving with AA-QQ and others calling with some amazingly bad hands. You need to gamble to acquire a big stack to carry you through the rest of the game.

If you manage to survive the rebuy period and make it to the break, you will usually be offered an add-on to purchase. Unless you have only just managed to get through the rebuy period with minimal chips then I would advise to always take the add-on if you can afford it. In most cases the add-on offers a larger stack of chips than you received for your initial buy-in so there is value to be had in just purchasing the add-on.

Straight after the restart it is not uncommon for people to either not know or have forgotten the rebuy period is over so be wary of all-ins for ridiculously large amounts but also be aware that the players who are left in the tournament will, on average, have a much deeper stack that they are used to handling which leads to some great value to be had as players play out of their comfort zone and fail to adjust to being so deep.

Rebuy tournaments can be fun and very profitable if played correctly but set yourself an amount you are prepared to lose and stick to it religiously or they can become very expensive. To aid you in doing this download poker tournament results into a basic spreadsheet so you can see how often you and your opponents rebuy and what seems an optimal amount for you.