Correct re-buy strategy???

[SGS]

I am going to enter my first no limit tournament. There is a $10 dollar registration fee plus $50 buy in. There are two $50 re-buys and one $50 add on available. Am I correct my thinking here?

If I am low on chips relative to the average, but can still rebuy I should be more willing to go all in on marginal hands in hopes to double up and even if I don't win I can still rebuy for more chips than I originally had?

Or do I play the same and then once the addon period is nearly over just do an add-on? I am basically looking for re-buy and add-on strategy. I have read TPFAP, but don't recall this information in the book. Thanks in advance.

SGS

[Bozeman]

Since you pay essentially the same amount for rebuy chips as original chips, you should play approximately ideal ring game strategy at all stack sizes. Just be aware that many players will be using strange (bad) strategies. A lot of your advantage comes from entering the no-rebuy stage with a roughly average stack, but paying considerably less than the average for it.

Craig

[Moose]

I've played in a lot of rebuy + addon tourneys in my day, these are the guidelines I've come up with. They may not be optimal but they make sense to me.

GOLDEN RULE: As Bozeman points out, with rebuys available, just play your normal ring A-game strategy, since the biggest factor that separates tourneys from ring game (limited bankroll) is not an issue at this point.

And as Bozeman also pointed out, if a guy has twice your chips but took 30+ rebuys to get it (as Huck Seed did in the $300+$30 PLOH at the 4 Queens Classic last year), you are in FAR better shape in terms of EV.

* In limit tournaments, rebuy if you have less than 6 times the big blind (you want about this much to bet a hand all the way through) unless the blinds are approaching, in which case you rebuy after the blinds pass. Being all-in out of position isn't always that bad.

* In no-limit, assuming you are a good player playing with complete pods, take every rebuy you can, but don't play stupid just to get a rebuy, with the POSSIBLE exception of limping in for one bet with marginal cards out of position if you need to drop $1 off your stack to get a rebuy (IE You start with $1k, rebuys are any time under $1k, I personally will call UTG with 64s or any such hand I can get away from real easy).

The big difference is that in NL, especially with a large skill advantage, you want as many chips as possible as your growth is geometric (IE doubling up through weak players).

* Take the add-on if the chips you can buy are worth about as much as you have on a "real dollar vs. tourney dollar" basis.

IE You have T2000 in front of you. The buy in was $50. You paid $1 for T40. If the rebuy gets you T40 or more for each dollar you invest, then take it. So if the rebuy is $50 for T2000, or 25 for T1000, then take it.

Nothing is funnier than guys with T11,000 getting a T2,000 rebuy, doubling their entry fee to nowhere near double their chances of winning.

Hope that helps, again, it's not really scientific, but it seems to make sense to me.

M.

[Greg (FossilMan)]

Moose wrote:
"* Take the add-on if the chips you can buy are worth about as much as you have on a "real dollar vs. tourney dollar" basis.
...
Nothing is funnier than guys with T11,000 getting a T2,000 rebuy, doubling their entry fee to nowhere near double their chances of winning."

You don't need to double your chances to make the add-on a monetarily correct play.

Let's say you paid $100 for T100 in chips. You played well, got lucky, whatever, and now have T400. You can pay another $100 and get T200 more. Why wouldn't you take this add-on? If everyone else takes the add-on, then the average value of each chip in this event is going to be just about 66 cents per T1 chip. Yet, with this add-on, you can pay $100 and get about $132 worth of chips. If you are exactly average in expecation as compared to the field, it seems to me like you're making $32 with this add-on.

In other words, the issue isn't the size of your stack and what you paid for it (as compared to the size of the add-on and it's cost). The issue is how much must you pay for the add-on, and how much will that add-on increase the value of your stack?

A stock trader friend of mine was hard to convince. To him, ROI is the thing, and he knew that this add-on would significantly decrease his ROI. My reply was essentially who cares? In poker, your concern shouldn't really be ROI, but merely total R(eturn). I mean, if you don't put that $100 into this tournament, it's not like it will be sitting in a money market fund earning interest. It's in your pocket, earning nothing. So go ahead and rebuy/add-on if the buy has +EV at all.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)