So, I've never played a rebuy before, but there seems to be a profileration of these on Prodigy. Thought I'd start with the super cent on Prodigy to get some practice.

$0.01 Re-buy, No Limit Holdem. 500 Starting Stack, 3 minute levels, 10 seater tables. Late registration and re-buys available until level 10, plus 1 add-on.

So the play here was just nuts. People shoving the stack hoping to double up and rebuy if they bust. The problem is even if you do double up once, you lose to a big stack and you're back to 500 chips. 15 minutes in you're at level 6 and you're rebuying for 5BB. At what point does a rebuy become pointless? And is this how usual Rebuy tournies go, or is this format special to the 1 cent rebuy?

Sounds "semi-normal" to me, although the specific rebuy MTT you mention in OP is ridic, though -- 1cent buyin with 500 chips, f-word that s-word imo. At least $1 buyin so it's not completely 100% bat-s-word insane right from the get go.


You should always do the initial rebuy to start with a double-stack.

If you really do think some opponents are pushing ANY two cards, then instead of gambling with Ace-rag or two-paint (which will often be a flip or a 40:60 or 30:70 dog), just wait until you have a hand that you feel is at least 60:40 vs. that "random" hand (e.g. 77, AJ, ATs KQs). If it takes a while to get that hand, all the better cuz your gambling opponent is likely doubled up now, thus you get to 4x the starting stack in a single hand. Now you can wait, since playing smallball is virtually impossible in these tourneys (pre-addon).


Also I find that if there's ever a hand with a ton of limpers then if you are first shove (in LP or from the blinds) you will often take it down uncontested ... since a monster would just open SHOVE since in rebuys the first few levels you always get gambolers calling those shoves with pocket 44, AXs, KJ, JTs, etc. so the limps are very unlikely to be "trapping". But the gain is so small that it's probably not worth doing that unless you're close to the add-on period and you've been completely card dead.



In a rebuy MTT when I am so totally card dead that I literally did not play a hand before the break (or nobody called my shove and thus I only took down the blinds and a limper or two) then I might have just under the "double the starting stack" ... but I'm still around the middle of the pack (!) since so many folks play these like a single-buyin freezeout "with an inflated prize pool". Almost makes sense to do that instead of gamboling, since one benefit to rebuy MTTs is that the "minimum" payout is usually something like 3x or 3.5x the buyin rather than just 2x.



And you'd think higher, non-micro, rebuy MTTs would be vastly different, more rational, but maybe not -- just ask Negreanu about that time at the WSOP rebuy even where he invested like 40 buyins as he gambled early on to build a huge stack. IIRC he had to final table it just to make money (and he did, I think).

AWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN BABY

Don't do this.

Cuz it's Kiwirimu's advice. (agreed, recommend all of my opponents to do the same, not just in rebuys )

Fine; my advice is for OP to enter as many tournaments as possible that have opponents playing according to Kiwirimu's "strategy".