Tournament Structure Question

[AnyAce]

Been playing a NL rebuy tourney at Turning Stone lately and can't seem to finish above the middle of the pack (I think I should occasionally do better than this as I have made it to the final table in other small tourneys). My concern is that I am not making the proper adjustments to the tournament structure. Here is the deal:

$40+10 buy-in gets you T300. Many people immediately rebuy for an additional $20 to T500 more.

Blinds start at 25-25 and rise at 15 minute intervals to:
25-50
50-100
100-200
Rebuys end at the end of the first hour and $20 add-on gets you T1000. After the add-on its 200-400.

I have also seen a lot of bad play (IMHO) where raises that seem (and turn out to be real) are not respected. Most recently I raise most of my stack (4-5xBB) with AKo, folded around to BB who calls with most of his stack with J5 suited. Flop is J 5 7 and I am hosed /forums/images/icons/frown.gif .

My question is: What adjustments would you make to playing in a tourney like this where the blinds rise rapidly & steeply relative to initial buy-in. I think I have been playing too tightly, but when I loosen up a bit in the first hour my cards seem to get rundown and I wind up rebuying.

Thanks in advance.
AnyAce

[Greg (FossilMan)]

You should be said you lost chips, but glad to rebuy at any opportunity.

The initial buy is $40 for T300, and the add-on is so cheap you should assume all will take it, at $20 for T1000. So, I would count these two buys as automatic for all players, which is $60 for T1300. Since the rebuys are $20 for T500, this is like getting T1500 for $60, which is cheaper than the other buys. Since these chips are cheaper than the average chip price throughout the tourney, you should make every rebuy for which you qualify.

As for how you should play, make those choices that you believe give you the highest EV in terms of chip count. Until you are in or near the money, this will correlate closely enough to EV in terms of $ that you can ignore the difference. If playing in terms of chips leads you to a mistake early on, it will be a minor mistake at most.

If the action is multiway with crap, you just need to wait for good hands that will likely win more than their fair share against the field competing for that pot. It's a roller-coaster ride, but there's little else to do.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)