Re-buy Strategy

Re-buy Strategy is a strategy that adjusts according to what type of table you are at in the first hour. If you are sitting at a table where players are just moving all-in every hand or every other hand then you can wait around for a hand and try to capitalize. There is a lot of luck and most players try to move their stack in a bunch of times to get chips. What you want to do is sit and wait if you are at a table with wildly aggressive players who just want to gamble early. If you try to play right with them you could be burning through a lot of money like them. Ideally, you would only want to lose 5 or 6 buy-ins if you could in the first hour, so, when you cash in the tournament you are still making a profit. If you are sitting at a table during the first hour with people who are afraid to lose money this is the time when you can be the aggressor. The goal after the first hour of a re-buy style tournament is to first have a big stack in front of you and secondly have a lot of chips at your table. If you cannot succeed in getting a big stack early, at the worst you will have a lot of chips at the table. The better players who sit in a re-buy will understand that they are better than their table, and can afford to make gambles during the first hour because they can get the chips back later on. Almost every regular re-buy tournament player can understand that if they are better than the field the chips will come back in time.

After the first hour or two of a re-buy tournament the stacks are big compared to the blinds. Most players will tone their game down and you should too. If you are sitting with a 60 big blind stack there is no reason for you to be dumping chips away to other players. If you play some races and lose it happens and is all part of the game, but with a big stack in a re-buy you don’t want to be gambling as much. Mainly, you would like to play tight and try to trap your opponent. If you can trap someone for a big pot and win the pot, you will coast throughout the rest of the tournament until the blinds grow a considerable amount. When the blinds to begin to get where they are worth winning you should try and pick your game up and make a run at making the final table. If you are deep stacked in the top 5 positions in the tournament you don’t need to gamble as much as if you were in the middle of the pack. Most of the time you can still sit and wait for hands in a re-buy and if you get unlucky it happens. But, what you want to do is just like in any other tournament; try and get your poker bonus money in with the best hand.