Most online poker rooms such as www.PokerStars.com offer different tournament structures and one of the popular structures used online is the rebuy poker tournament. In a rebuy online poker tournament, the players are allowed to rebuy chips if they lose all of there chips, but usually only for the first hour of the tournament. There are some benefits and negatives of playing in rebuy tournaments and we’re going to spend some time looking at those so you can decide if this poker tournament structure works out for you.
Pros
* During the rebuy period of the tournament you don’t need to worry about losing on a bad beat because you can just buy more chips if you lose. The worst feeling is losing on a bad beat when you should have won the pot in any type of poker tournament, but in most you can’t rebuy into the event like you can in a rebuy tournament.
* Generally in a rebuy tournament there will be more rebuys then actual players registered for the event and this is common. The benefit of this is that the prize pool is going to be 2-3X the normal size of the prize pool for the size of tournament you’re playing. This means you have the same chance of winning whether it was a normal tournament or rebuy tournament, but the money you can win will be much larger in a rebuy event.
* In the early stage of the tournament when a lot of the players are rebuying you can find a lot of fish to help build your stack. If you notice that a player is going all-in a lot then you should try to trap them into a hand and take there stack. Keep bullying the player until they decide not to rebuy or until they can’t rebuy anymore. You should be able to increase your chip stack early in a rebuy tournament if you play your cards right.
Cons
* Rebuy tournaments at PokerStar are going to take longer to finish then any other type of tournament with the same amount of players and this is simply because the players can rebuy chips in the beginning instead of being eliminated. If you know you don’t have the time to play patiently then don’t even bother entering the tournament because you’ll just be donating to another player.
* Since players can rebuy the players without much skill and huge wallets will be able to buy themselves deep into the tournament. Now this is a con because if you get beat on a bad beat from this player down the road in the tournament you’re going to wish he wasn’t allowed to rebuy earlier.
* When you’re trying to adapt to your opponents in a rebuy tournament it can take an hour or two depending on how long the rebuy period is to see how your opponents are playing. Most play differently during the rebuy period because they can rebuy so you won’t be able to tell who is strong and weak until after the rebuy period has ended.