are re-buy tournaments as dumb as they seem to me?

[MicroBob]

no. you're way off.

your have some misconceptions about 'guaranteed' tournaments.

in the Stars $45k guaranteed (at 10:15pm each night...a $10 rebuy tourney with over 1,000 players typically) they will usually end up with a prize-pool of over $50k.
If, for some reason, the players don't take enough re-buys and add-ons then the prize-pool will be a MINIMUM of $45k (even if only 12 people sign-up and take only 1 re-buy each).



re-buys and add-ons can be a great value.
you just have to adjust the ACTUAL cost of entering the tournament to reflect that it's a rebuy.

You are playing deeper-stack poker which should give a skilled player a greater advantage (less of a crap-shoot per-se).

And on most sites where there is no additional entry-fee charged on the re-buys it's terrific.
If I play a $25+2 rebuy then I am going to anticipate at least 1 rebuy and 1 add-on (I will always take the re-buy to double-up right at the start...because it is usually correct to do so).

I anticipate an average of 2 re-buys and an add-on (sometimes I'll only have to use my 1 re-buy at the beginning...other times I'll have to take 3 or 4 re-buys).


So when I play a $25+2 rebuy I'm really looking at it as approximately a $100+2 deepish-stack tourney....which is a whole lot better imo then a $100+10 regular-stack tourney.
It's a great value.


You usually have to be willing to be very aggressive in the first hour and, if necessary, take more than a couple re-buys.
That's Barry Greenstein's (and others) stated strategy for re-buys (plays like a borderling maniac in the first hour trying to accumulate chips) and it is mine as well.

What's also great about the rebuys is that the maniac-strategy gets taken WAY too far by a few select morons so you have definite value in trying to increase your stack to 10k or so in the first hour.
and many players are unable to appropriately change gears in the 2nd hour (when it becomes a freeze-out).


I don't play the rebuys on Empire because they charge an additional entry-fee on each rebuy (if it's a 30+3 then it should only be $30 to rebuy...not $33....big-time -EV when they chop off 10% EACH time like that).

[Adam22]

yeah i got that now. thanks for clearing it up for me, i was confused.