Bigger Deal

In my previous blog we talked about basic principles of playing a rebuy tournament. This outlined the structual changes during the event, specifically the rebuy period, that effected changes in the players’ rebuy strategy. Now it’s time to look at how different playing styles can operate within these guidelines.

I have decided that there are three major styles of play. Of course there are many but you are really trying to get into the freezeout section with a solid stack of chips, so we can focus on the three popular strategies and cover most of the ground.

Playing Tight. In olden days, by which I mean 10-15 years ago, there was enough loose play in these tournaments to coast along and pick up the chips that no-hopers threw at you. This is no longer true in the competitive local rebuy event. Most of the field can play and although new players turn up frequently without an idea in the box, there are more than enough who have.

So the choice of playing tight comes down to minimizing your outlay, playing good hands strongly and trying to switch gear once the rebuy period has finished. This is good in principle as we are targeting aggressive rebuy events, where the average number of rebuys is 3 or more (or a guaranteed prize fund that amounts to the same thing). If you managed to get into the freezeout phase having no rebuy, or one, then you have spent well below half of the average. From this it is clear that the others are going to have to out-perform you by more than 2:1 to claim the same percentage profit. And that is difficult. So we have a viable plan.

However this is not the whole story. There are two things wrong with this. Firstly, percentages don’t add up to prize money. If you average 30% gain on £/$40 outlay, you are winning £/$12 per event. But if the more aggressive player averages 18% on £/$100 outlay then they are winning £/$18 per event. The other problem is prize structure. Nearly all brickhouse tournaments I have played in (say 1000) have bizarre structures allocating the money to the winners. Often it occurs that 75% of the prize fund goes to the first three in the event and that means you are getting over-rewarded for 2nd place and under-rewarded for 6th. Thus you have to play to win and not to place. Unfortunately the Tight strategy will handicap you as you will too often have too few chips to attack the pole position. It’s a plan but not the best.

So lets move on to The Tight Aggressive. Here we are still going to restrict the number of hands that we play but when we do play a hand, whether it be a classically rated hand or just trash, we are going all the way. We are also prepared to rebuy up to the limits given in Part One and at any pace, according to the hands we chose and their outcome.

Of course you will be lucky to get dealt loads of premium hands with which to attack, so you are going to have to occasionally select the likes of 10-9 suited to play. This type of hand does at least give the opportunity to represent overcards should they fall and really have a hand if middle cards drop. It’s these middle hands that get Ace-King to pay you off in disbelief and despair. Infact, the rebuy format makes this style of play possible on a limited bankroll when in no other format, cash or tournament, could you contemplate it.

The Tight Aggressive (or TAG) works well in these restrictive-time rebuy events. The thing not to do is get a little success and then back off. You must be aiming to hit the freezeout with a serious stack of chips because you will get busted from the tournament more often than when playing tight. So you must be in a strong position when you are not busted. In practice you will have to control the urge to back off, because all but the insane have an auto-protect mode that self-selects. Most of the successful rebuy artists play this TAG style.

The third and last catagory is one that I will call the Negreanu Method. Mr. Daniel Negreanu is famous for buying into $1000 rebuy events dozens of times. From listening to him over the years it is pretty clear he has developed a twofold theory to justify his play to himself. He is not alone, many others have tried it, but can it possibly work?

The first part of his theory is that these large rebuy events have a slow ante/blind increment rate and the average chip stack grows equally slowly. Thus he manages not to break one of the important tenets of our rebuy play, and that is not to rebuy when the average chip stack is 4 times that of the rebuy stack (and more often just 3 times). So by super aggressive play (that he can afford - possibly not others) he will at some stage ride his luck into a big stack of chips. From there he is well positioned to take advantage of the next part of his theory.

The second string to his bow concerns Daniel being one of the greatest freezeout Hold’em players in the world, and secretly in his head, the greatest. So whatever it has cost him he will be able to turn his chips into real cash far more often than those around him. To some extent this is true, but is his whole theory OK?

In the World Series Of Poker 2006 there were several $1000 No-Limit rebuy events. The second of these, event number 34, saw Daniel rebuy 48 times for a total of $49,000. To make a profit he needed to finish 8th or better from 754 player field! After nearly two days play he busted out before the money and saw Phil Hellmuth go on to collect his tenth World Series win and a big chunk of Daniel’s money.

To be fair to ‘Kid Poker’ he did score a third place two years earlier in the same event having bought in 29 times. Then he made a profit of $70,000 and so is still technically ahead. However he has failed many more times to bring home the bacon after a torrent of money flowed from his wallet. But then how could you possibly be of sound mind after 48 rebuys? Punch drunk was never more apt.

The truth is that the days are long gone where anyone can bulldoze their way through a field. The players are too good. More to the point, if it were possible that this Negreanu Method could work, you would have to be Negreanu or someone just as good. And if you were just as good then the TAG system would be more profitable and much less likely to send you on tilt!

Having said all that, there are a few people, Negreanu being one of them, for whom the all-out attack method is the only way to feed their personality quirks with the right type of action. If you are one of them then consider doing something else, or become Daniel Negreanu.