Rebuy Tournaments
On pokerstars I’ve been playing the $10+$1 rebuy tournaments a lot. These usually have a $70,000 guaranteed prize pool. In these poker tournaments, I almost never have to rebuy because there are so many players taking unnecessary risks that I can just wait for a big hand and almost guarantee getting action with it. I can often limp in with big pairs and get raised, maybe even re-raised before putting all of my chips in the middle. It’s a great time to gamble with the best hand. At the same time, there are a lot of players making pure bluff all-ins. This also makes it a good time to call with marginal hands like weak aces and KQ, KJ, QJ type of poker hands. I don’t like to put my chips in with small pairs in the early stages of rebuy tournaments because the likelihood of multiway all-ins puts your small pair at risk against perhaps 3 or more over cards.
The rebuys (and add-ons) normally exceed the number of buy-ins, so the amount of money in the prize pool similar to a much larger buy-in tournament. Without spending money on a rebuy, I’m playing in a tournament with a much bigger prize pool than any other poker tournament with the same buy-in.
Though, even by accumulating chips early, spending an extra buy-in on an add on is usually advisable, because just about everyone does the same. Spending money on an add-on keeps you above the average chips stack and also gives you a sort of safety net to adjust in the forthcoming freezeout stage of the tournament.
