REBUY!!!
John Huckle
When it comes to the 1st hour of rebuy MTT poker, players more used to freezeouts will often find themselves wondering how best to play. Many people play MTT rebuys like complete rocks only playing
premium hands as if it were a freeze out and inevitably being out drawn and giving out lots of abuse and getting frustrated. Other players employ total loon tactics and any two will do, shoving
pretty much or calling into any pot trying to build a stack fast but at extreme cost, doing this is in effect going full retard. Some will argue that they are feeding chips to the table to get them
back later, this can work but in my experience there enough bad players and full retards about who will chip up the table, you just need to get them shipped to you.
On average in any rebuy MTT there are 3 to 4 times as many chips in play as a regular freezeout, so realistically you should be aiming to have 4 times your starting stack minimum at the end of the rebuy period and as its unlikely you will get paid off with enough premium hands in this period you will have to widen your range and play more marginal hands from positions you normally would not.
I usually like to aim for 10,000 chips (if I start with 1500) after the add on which would normally put me ahead of the average, you will need to take calculated risks with suited and connected cards in multi way pots as the pay off can be very profitable and can get you too your target sooner.
Forget slow playing huge hands, as a lot of players want to see flops so bet hard pre flop and if you hit, stick it in. Remember there will also be players applying similar tactics so if you miss the flop, forget the bluff it will just be a gift to the other players.
If you do manage to get chipped up early revert back to your A game and try to protect your stack, play only premium hands and avoid the urge to race. Most importantly don’t watch the leaderboard as the temptation can be to gamble an already good stack to keep up with the leaders, remember its who has got all the chips at the end that matters not after the 1st hour.
Many players often question me when the rebuys are over and I have a good stack but still add on, they will usually ask, “Isn’t that a waste of money?” My answer is that “an add-on will give you a round of blinds in the later stages of a tournament and can mean the difference between getting in the cash or not”. As well as this it can give you very nice added value in double up situations, that extra 1500 chips becomes 3000 then 6000 and so on every time you double through. Most players will take it and it can be an important edge later on.
Please note this is only for the rebuy period and you need to be capable of switching off such play and going back to position and starting hands straight after you have added on.
Some of the players on your table will not have the brain capacity to tell the difference between the play in the rebuy hour and the freeze out part, those players will still think you’re a total fish and will be tempted to play back at you, which for hour two can be very profitable. They will try to take your big hands on with all sorts of rag aces and two picture cards thinking you’re still hold marginal hands, and wont be able to pass if they hit any of the flop. They will automatically assume any raise in position is a steal, and every call of a raise is some fishy donk hand so if you hit big expect to get paid fully.
Hands in such situations will normally be against the players dishing out the abuse in the chat, you know the ones the “how could you call with that” brigade so fill your boots and watch them go bananas when you kill them.
You will need to make adjustments to your game dependant on the buy in, as there are subtle differences in the play between the low buy in MTT’s and the higher ones. This can be that there are more satellite qualifiers in the big buy in tourneys, these players often cant afford to rebuy and as such will be able to pass, even the higher stakes players will shy away from multiple rebuys, so you really need to try and work out who’s who. If you have a heads up display of some sort this can be invaluable in such situations to spot the rocks or retards.
In the lower stakes rebuys passing is almost out of the question as the tendency to gamble is huge especially if the opponent picks up any draw or hits top pair it will all go in.
The rewards from MTT rebuys are potentially huge and I have won and final tabled on the many rebuy MTT’s across all the online sites using this tactic in tournaments ranging from $10 rebuys to $200 rebuys. The average prize pool will be 3 to 4 times as big as the same runner freezeout so played sensibly they need not be costly but could put a huge chunk of cash in your pocket.
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