To Rebuy or Not to Rebuy

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To Rebuy or Not to Rebuy; That Is the Question

Rebuy tournaments offer poker players two things, the chance to get in there and gamble-it-up early if they so desire, and the chance to talk about one of the last remaining theoretical situations in poker: When is it correct to rebuy? In this article I’ll lay out the two philosophical camps in the rebuy debate, a debate that has been raging on for years with little end in sight.

*My goal in this article is not to toss my support behind of one of these camps over the other; my goal is to lay out both schools of thought and let you the reader decide… or continue the debate. *

Choosing a Single or Double Buy-In

The one area where there is little debate is whether or not to double rebuy right at the start of the tournament (when this is allowed of course). Virtually everyone in poker agrees that it is always correct to double rebuy at the start of the tournament because most of your opponents will be doing the same, and many are willing to get all their chips in the middle in marginal spots. Therefore, if you do not double your stack at the start of the tournament you are leaving a lot of chips on the table when you move all-in with 60% equity with 1,500 chips instead of 3,000. In the first scenario where you have 1,500 chips you profit 300 chips. On the other hand, if you accepted the initial rebuy offer at the beginning of the tournament you’d win 600 chips in the long-run.

This also has an exponential component to it since it’s not uncommon to end a rebuy period having doubled your chip-stack four, five or even more times. So those 300 lost chips could easily turn into 4,700 chips if you double-up four times throughout the tournament.

Camp #1: The Rebuy Advocates

Rebuy advocates will tell you that building a big stack is the most important goal during the rebuy period, so you don’t mind taking some chances because if you get felted you can just rebuy and  doubling your stack a few times in the early stages gives you a terrific chance at a final table run. Of course, the more you invest in a tournament the more you will need to cash for to show a profit, and rebuying isn’t just merely adding chips to your stack by clicking a button; you rebuy when you have busted.

Now, the theory for proponents of rebuying is that as the tournament progresses the prize-pool continues to grow, and less and less players’ soldier-on busting out of the tournament and leaving plenty of dead-money in their wake. I should also add that there are ICM theories that can be applied here, but since this is very early on in the tournament I tend to ignore this train of thought and won’t delve into it here.

While this theory makes plenty of sense there is a credible argument against it: Rebuy opponents will rightly say that by this logic the “perfect” rebuy strategy would be to wait until the end of the late registration period to register for the tournament; so long as the double rebuy and the add-on are not disproportionately small compared to the average chip-stack. This is actually an avenue I haven’t seen explored fully, and if true it would be one that would come into play for any tournament that offers late registration: Just how much equity, if any, are we losing by buying –in at the end of the late registration period? But that’s a topic for another day…

Camp #2: The Rebuy Opponents

Oddly enough, the opponents of rebuying are not against playing in rebuy tournaments at all, their issue is more one of value; particularly the decreased value a rebuy offers you when your opponents’ average chip-stacks have grown larger than the initial buy-in. Obviously this is more and more relevant the deeper into the rebuy period you are.  The theory goes like this; after you’ve started the tournament with a double buy-in you should simply enter a NEW tournament once you are eliminated.  This will do two things:

• It will maximize the value of your next buy-in, since you will start on equal footing with all of your opponents. This is for the most part the basis of their entire argument: The notion of buying into a tournament where you get fewer chips than the current average seems to indicate that simply entering a new tournament where everything is equal would be the better way to go.
• It will keep you from wasting more rebuys and add-ons when you have a below average stack. Looking down the road, when you decide to rebuy you are not simply buying into the tournament another time (or twice if you do a double rebuy), you are essentially buying-in a second or third time since you will most likely be taking the add-on as well. So if you are going to be well below the tournament average you are actually paying three-times the price to do so if you double-rebuy AND add-on. Opponents of rebuying would rather just chalk-up the two buy-in loss than throw three or more buy-ins away chasing after your initial loss.

The Gist of the Argument

So the argument between the two camps basically boils down to this: Is it better to start a new tournament where your investment is equal to all of the other players, or is it better to continue playing a rebuy tournament and competing against a slightly trimmed-down field but with a smaller than average chip-stack?

In the most simplistic terms it would be like asking the following question: Would you rather enter a $10 tournament with 99 other players where everyone begins with 2,000 chips? Or, would you rather enter a $10 tournament with 2,000 chips where 70 of the original 100 players remain (considering other rebuys that have taken place) and the average chip-stack is 3,000 chips?

Honestly, the rebuy opponents seem to have the better case based on this argument alone, but that  starts to change when we consider a few other things I haven’t touched upon yet. So, here are some other considerations cited by rebuy advocates that tip the scales a bit in their favor:

• The length of time already invested. If you begin a new tournament after playing a rebuy event for 45 minutes you’re adding nearly an hour to the amount of time you have allocated for poker.  So if entering a new tournament has an Expected Value of $2 more than rebuying you may actually be losing money by playing in the new tournament if your hourly rate is more than $2. So, what we have is a case where ROI may increase but hourly rate decreases.
• The loss of reads on your opponents, and the understanding of the table dynamics. There is also something to be said for having 30+ minutes of reads on your opponents and having a good idea of the general table dynamics. By deciding not to rebuy and enter a new tournament you will have to start this process all over again.
• Your opponents in rebuy events tend to get more and more desperate as the rebuy period comes to a close. Using one of the simplest “rules” of poker, anytime you feel you have a considerable edge over the field you are in a good game, and if your opponents are playing like fools than you certainly have a pretty big edge even if you have fewer chips.
• There is no rake on the rebuys and add-ons. This is another factor that needs to be considered when we start looking at overall value, especially when the difference is really close. The lack of tournament fees on rebuys and add-ons is definitely worthy of consideration.

As you can see, both camps are standing on pretty solid ground, and both make very valid arguments, and complicating things is the fact that a lot of the points are hard to calculate as they are more philosophical and abstract, like the amount of value there is in having reads on opponents.