Limit tourney, starting stack = 10 big bets

[Carl]

Hi,

I sometimes play in a local weekly tourney here in Sweden. The buy-in is around $60 of which about $48 goes to the price pool. The tourney usually has around 25 participants and pays 60% to 1st, 30% to 2nd and 10% to 3rd place.

It's limit hold'em. The starting stack is 400 in tournament chips and the first level is 20-40, i.e. you only have 10 big bets! After 20 min the level goes up to 30-60 and after another 20 min to 40-80. During this first hour every player has the possibility to re-buy if one goes broke, maximum two times.

The first hour the game is very loose and the aggressiveness is average. There is always a flop, usually with around four players. After the rebuy period the game tightens up somewhat and people tend to play less crazy even though I still think most of the others play to loose.

My problem in this game is to survive the first hour. I usually do not rebuy since getting 400 new chips when the limits are 30-60 or 40-80 is pretty much a lottery. I play a pretty tight tournament strategy and usually end up among the last six players provided I survive the first hour.

How would you play this game. I've actually considered playing a really loose strategy to begin with until I either end up with enough chips to play comfortably at level four (50-100) or bust out. It seems to me that in the first stage of this tournament you are quite dependent on luck since you do not have the time to wait for big hands. You need to play draws, and hit them.

Maybe I should quit playing in this game altogether while I'm still up a little.

/ Carl

[Mike Haven]

this is a set-up for gambling action

either you ask the room to change the set-up if you think no one likes it, and players are staying away - or - you gamble with the rest of them

i don't believe any strategy can win in the short term with this type of game

[jasonHoldEm]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
The buy-in is around $60 of which about $48 goes to the price pool.

[/ QUOTE ]

This means a rake of $12, that's 25%! Maybe I'm spoiled by internet tournaments, but that seems ridiculous, is this a normal tournament rake for B&amp;M?

Thanks,
jHE

[Ignatius]

Your overall strategy would depend a lot on the rebuys:
- how much is one rebuy?
- do rebuys contribute fully to the price-pool?
- can you addon, and if so how much and at what cost?
- how big is usually the resulting price-pool?

[Carl]

Yes the rake is actually 20%.

The rebuys are $48 and that gets you another 400 tournament chips. All the money from the rebuys goes to the price pool. The total price pool can usually be around $1700 i.e. about 1.5*$48 per player.

/ Carl

[Ignatius]

OK, so there's a slight discount on rebuys (i.e. no house take). That means that your "no-rebuy" strategy is bogus: if you think that you are good enough that you can beat the format with a no-rebuy strategy and thus with a 20% handicap, that you should do even better with a 1 rebuy (10% handicap) or 2 rebuys (6.66% handicap).
.
This means that you should not bail out to chase profitable but risky situations if you have rebuys left and also that you should always opt to rebuy instead of dorping out.