The Best Thing About Online Rebuy Tournaments

I've never really been a fan of rebuy tournaments. I believe that once a tournament begins, everyone should be on an equal playing field, regardless of their bankroll. But I've played a few rebuy tournaments online, and I've grown to like them better than their brick-and-mortar (B&M) counterparts. Let me quickly give you my view of rebuy tournaments, and then explain why I find those online to be more advantageous.

Rebuy Tournaments According to Matt

I have come to accept four truths about rebuy tournaments:

1. The main purpose of the rebuy period is to determine how much it will cost you (and your opponents) to play the tournament. Therefore, your goal during that time is not to accumulate chips, but to keep your cost down.

2. Nobody ever wins a tournament during the rebuy period. I don't care if you go on a monster rush. You'll rarely have so many chips that you become a favorite to make the final table.

3. Along the same lines, you will not lose the tournament during the rebuy period, either, as long as you've made up your mind to make as many rebuys as necessary.

4. For that reason, you should be prepared to rebuy as often as necessary. Of course, you'd rather cruise through the tournament without having to rebuy at all, but you should always have the money available to rebuy, and never let yourself get busted out of a tournament during the rebuy period.

Except for No. 3, none of these are universal truths. They are just my personal opinions of rebuy tournaments, and some people might disagree with one or more of my statements. So, with that list in mind, why am I partial to online rebuy tournaments? Because many more players allow themselves to bust out during the rebuy period in online tournaments than in B&M tournaments.

Again, this is just from my personal experience, but I think I've played in enough tournaments that I can make the above statement with 99 percent confidence.

I've played in some online rebuy tournaments that had some pretty large fields, anywhere from 250 to 600 players. No matter how large the field or the buy-in, the same pattern seems to develop every time: About one-fourth of the field decides to bow out during the rebuy period. All of those players can essentially be considered dead money, since you will outlast them every time - that is, assuming you follow my advice in No. 4 above. Of course, having all of those early exits is a tremendous advantage for you. Contrast that to B&M rebuy tournaments, where I would estimate that, on average, only 10 percent of the field exits during the rebuy period. I can give you two main reasons for this large discrepancy:

Reason No. 1: One hour of play online does not equal one hour of play in a B&M casino.

In both online and B&M tournaments, the rebuy period is usually one hour (in major tournaments, it's sometimes two hours). A lot more hands get played in an online hour than in a B&M hour, so it stands to reason that there are more opportunities for players to get eliminated. Personally, I think having an hour-long rebuy period online is excessive, and it leads to some long tournaments, but since so many players bow out in that first hour, I'm willing to accept it.

Reason No. 2: It's a lot more convenient to quit a tournament if you're already at home.

There are players (myself included) who sometimes play online for only 15 minutes or a half-hour at a time. You won't see too many players who go out of their way to make a trip to a B&M cardroom play for less than an hour. Therefore, in a B&M rebuy tournament, most players will make a more concerted effort to survive the rebuy period. Otherwise, they might have to go home (perish the thought!). Online, I think players have a more blasé attitude about getting knocked out early. If it happens, they can dive right into a live game, or simply log off and do something else at home. With that attitude, they are less serious about winning the tournament, which of course is to your benefit, assuming you are giving your best effort.

So, My Advice Is …

Going into a rebuy tournament, you should be prepared to make as many rebuys as necessary. That doesn't mean you want to go berserk betting and raising just because you can rebuy if you go broke. Some players (God bless them) do just that. Hopefully, you're more sensible than that. If you had your choice, of course you'd prefer not to have to make any rebuys. But your opponents have a distinct advantage if they have the bankroll to make as many rebuys as necessary, while you might be stuck exiting the tournament because you can't afford to rebuy.

Affordability, which might be an issue in B&M cardrooms, shouldn't be a factor online. There are currently enough low-limit options out there that you really don't need a big bankroll to play a rebuy tournament: $3, $5, $11, $22, and $33 online rebuy tournaments are in abundance. They attract hundreds of players at a time, and the prize pools are deceptively large. For those reasons, I think they're worth a shot. But whatever you do, don't enter a rebuy tournament with the mentality that you'll make only your original buy-in and quit if you go broke. That's not the way to be thinking, and you'd be much better off entering a non-rebuy tournament.

Matt Lessinger's "Bet With Less" column appears in Card Player magazine. He can be found playing online at RoyalVegasPoker.com

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