Of rebuys and freezeouts...

DeVore

The current fascination for freezeouts confuses me... I understand the desire to get away from the kind of player we saw in the Fitz recently... the guy who bought in 12 times and was going all in before either his chips or his cards arrived. Ok, he's bonkers and we need some way to stop that sort of nonsense or else the guys with big wads of cash will always have an advantage.

However its f*ckin' stupid to have it so that any bad luck at all and you are out on your arse, especially in a large tournie where you are inevitably subject to the vagaries of chance.

I prefer the one rebuy OR one top up method where you at least have a get-out-of-bad-beat-jail card you can use once.

Actually I see nothing wrong with the 20-in at the moment except that far too many morons seem to have 20 quid to lose these days
Its not abused in the same way the free roll is because its twice as expensive and you can only rebuy three times (including your top up) so its of limited use to adopt the loose-as-MrP approach.

DeV.

Marq

I too find the one rebuy or top-up format best, it's my prefered home game. It makes everyone respect their chips right from the start because you know that although you do have your "get-out-of-jail-free" (or for a fixed amount at least) card, using it means that you can't top-up later on, and you are at a deserved disadvantage because of it. Everyone gets bad luck, so it's good to have a second chance, but when you give people ten chances, and they've a wad of notes they don't care about in their pocket, it does make it difficult for those of us on reasonable budgets to use the format to our advantage. I played the twenty game in the merrion recently, and they have increased the number of rebuys to four, and I was amazed that people were playing it like the free-roll before the freeze-out, two people on my table spent €103 before the freeze-out (and I smugly add, went out soon afterwards). Makes these supposedly tighter games much more difficult to play. So, in summation: Rebuy good, multiple rebuys bad. For me at least.

mewso

Well it's a double-edged sword as the prize at the end will be bigger with more rebuys allowed. Having said that I much prefer straight forward freezeouts, no rebuys, top-ups, nothin'.

bohsman

The huge difference is your starting chips in a freezeout you start with 3000+ chips you can raise without risking half your stack and you can build a nice stack without having to go all in whereas on a thursday your going to double through a few times to have any chance

cormie

The only good thing about thursday is getting something for a possible nothing. The tournament is terrible. I much prefer freezeout. If you get bad luck, that's bad luck, play again the next tournament for the same price of a re-buy/top up.

Let me ask you this. If it was a re-buy/top up tournament say €20 entry and you had one re-buy or one top up for €20 and it gave you the same amount of chips and there was also a freezeout tourny JUST about to start for €20 entry and all you had was €20, would you spend it on the re buy or would you spend it on the freezeout?

I think the idea of more chips being added to a tournament is terrible. I Think it's much better that everyone starts with the same amount and has the same chance as everyone else. There are people who can't afford €10 even. I heard "player gone" about 5 mins into it last night. But it's not about the money you could end up spending it's the chips at the table. I remember that night I made it to the final 3 with you Dev, I was playing well, didn't rebuy once and didn't top up, I was chip leader earlier on and because I didn't get hands for a while, my stack was being matched by about 4 or 5 others because of the amount of re-buys occuring, and then at the break I was nearly the shortest stack (not because blinds, just because of the amount of rebuys being added to the table)

I think everyone should have the same chance regardless of the notes in their pockets. If you get a bad beat, you play the next tournament. That's how I'd like it to be.

Marq

Much as I hate it when I have to rebuy, I don't think that the tournament scene would be as healthy without rebuys. Lots of people go the fitz for a good night out and enjoy their time there even though they've no chance of winning. Rebuys keep those people who have more money than sense coming in week after week, and regardless of how annoying twelve all-ins a row can be, those people are good in the long run for those of us who are out to actually win. If it were a freeze-out these people would most likely be the ones that go out very early every week, and they would stop coming. This is bad for all involved. The rebuys also boost the number of tickets, the free-rolls just can't function without them.

cormie

I think it's good in the way it gives people who wouldn't usually have a chance an advantage. Terrible poker is what I meant. It's good fun alright. Allot of humorous moments:)

dropsy

Here's a few lines from Sklansky on rebuy tournaments -

"If you are one of the better players in the tournament, how could that (rebuying) not be the right thing to do? Not only does your superior play make that second rebuy something with a positive expected value, you are also taking advantage of the mathematical fact that smaller stacks are worth more per chip than the larger stacks, due to the prize structure."

He also goes on to say that add-ons are, in most cases, the right thing to do.

So coming along to a tournament with enough money for the buy-in alone would, even assuming that you are a better than average player, put you at a large disadvantage, particularly given that most players who can afford a rebuy will be substantially looser during the rebuy period while the person who cannot afford the rebuy will be playing naturally tight from the start.

I'm with you Dev regarding a small number of rebuys being the best format, but in the long run the players who buy in multiple times should end up paying you off more in the lng run. Yes, they might catch a few lucky outs every now and then but over time they will end up paying you assuming that you are playing soundly.

Dropsy