[McMelchior]

[ QUOTE ]
My favorite scenario is when someone is holding on to his initial buyin so tight, like a pillow to keep him in his ignorance, gets aces and finally decides to play. Since he is so short I decide to call and win with k4. He then says moron, and I agree.

[/ QUOTE ]Assuming the player at least rebuys when he's allowed to you're calling a minimum of 15 BBs with K4. Unless you were the OR trying to take the blinds down on a bluff (and why on earth you would do that in the first hour of a rebuy beats me) and then calls a small all-in re-raise from the tight player this makes absolutely no sense.

If you are a strong big-stack player it's probably +EV to splash the table during the re-buy period, increasing your chance of building a big stack and dominating the tournament from the get-go.

I am not effective with a big stack (it takes good reading ability and a certain kind of guts), and most of the time I manage to build a big stack early on it's either gone within an hour or I fail to increase it and get caught up by the average way before the money. A wild re-buy strategy would clearly leave me with a negative ROI.

Still I'm pretty happy to play (and make a decent profit from) the $3 and $5 re-buys on Stars. I play a comfortable TAG style, not afraid to get my chips in with prime holdings, but certainly not splashing them away with marginal to poor hands. I rarely need to make more than one extra double re-buy, and frequently get away with just the initial re-buy and the add-on.

The trick is that the general level of play is so poor, that I rarely fail to increase my stack (way) above average in the hour following the end of the re-buy period, simply by playing a TAG game.

Most of the players that build good sized stacks during the re-buy period are incapable of adjusting to the deep-stack non-re-buy part of the tournament, calling big raises and even all-ins with marginal holdings.

Additionally players who failed to build a big stack are generally unaware of the "M" concept, panics when their stack dwindles below 50% of the average stack, even if they still have plenty of play sitting on 20 - 30 x the big blind, and are basically throwing the chips away in (completely unnecessary) desperation.

Best,

McMelchior (Johan)