Rebuy Tourney Madness

I'm not planning to play too much today. I am saving my playing time for the $300K Sunday Guaranteed tomorrow. This normally has a $215 buy in, but of course, someone with my tiny bankroll couldnt afford this - and even if I could, it wouldnt be a good investment, given the number of proper players who are likely to be in there.

I qualified through an $11 Rebuy qualifier a few days ago. I don't play rebuy tourneys on principle - it seems to have the loosest play of all the formats. It coin-flipping heaven, with huge bets constantly being made by anyone with mediocre hands upwards. It seems a magnet for people with lots of money and no skill.

I entered this qualifier without realising it was a rebuy - I was seduced by a pop-up message from PP in the chat box while playing a standard game. The only bits that registered were "$300K", "5 minutes", "16 seats guaranteed". The "rebuy" bit didnt register.

I took a look at the tourney lobby, and with only a couple of minutes to go before the tourney started, there were only about 30-odd players registered to play. I signed up in a flash - $11 entry to a $215 buy in, with what I thought would be less than 100 players, and 16 guaranteed seats into tourney. It was a no-brainer in terms of value.

Shows what I know (and that PP know more). From all corners of the Party Poker nether regions, other players ran like lemmings towards the cliff, responding to the same message I had and registering for the tourney. By the time the tourney started, a couple of hundred people were registered, and suddenly it wasnt such a bargain entry.

And then I noticed it was a rebuy. Dammit. I read somewhere that a reasonable strategy for a rebuy is to do an immediate rebuy at the start of a game to double your stack, and to plan to buy the add-on after the first hour. I don't know if this was good advice, but I planned to follow it, so my "cheap" $11 game was likely to cost me almost 3 times that. The value was now even worse.

Anyway I rebuy at the start, and settle down to a tight game. Staying out of the firing line unless I have a premium hand and/or position, watching the coin-flippers indulge in an orgy of attempts to double up. People with 6K stacks going all in with 66, being called by someone with A5. People with any two suited cards chasing flushes like I would chase Jennifer Lopez in a thong. And when they get busted out, an immediate double rebuy and it starts again.

It was the loosest, most clueless table I have ever been at. There were 3-4 players with a seemingly unlimited budget just going at it non stop. All in with any semi-playable pocket hand, and regularly being called by the other coin flippers. They would take turns to double each other up/bust each other out/rebuy. They made between 6-10 rebuys each during that first hour (which means they spent about $60-$100 each!).

I sat back watching the carnage, only picking up 3-4 playable hands that I was willing to expose to this style of play in that first hour. Still, i built my 6K stack up to 10K without ever being at risk, and was happy enough with that. One minute before the freezout, I get involved in a hand with the chief coin flipper.

He had already made 9 rebuys that I counted (yes nine). 6 of the rebuys had been in the 5 minutes leading up to the break / freezout, and was playing like a complete idiot. Literally, all-in with any two cards. He leads out from the small blind with an all-in bet for his 6K stack. I am sitting pretty with pocket kings, and call. He shows 3-5off. I am laughing and congratulating myself that I will be not too far off the lead going into the freezout.

4 spades hit the board, I have none, he has one, and makes a flush. Having played completely solid poker for an hour, I was suddenly short stacked by the worlds biggest idiot making just the most awful play imaginable and getting rewarded for it.

I went on a trash-talking rampage that lasted a solid hour. I don't feel good about it now. I kind of humiliated the guy, who was an utterly clueless fool with seemingly a full blown gambling problem. It pushed him into his shell - he barely played a hand in the second hour, despite being the table big stack at the start.

I doubled up a couple of times to get back to the chip average, and then got a series of good hole cards that hit flops and got action, building a stack up to 56K by the second break. He was down to 8K when we were finally separated, way below the chip average. I protected my stack pretty well for the rest of the tourney, rarely putting chips at risk, and made it to the final 16 without too much drama, qualifying for the "big one" on Sunday.

Bizarrely, so did the coin flipping fool. We ended up back on the same table with 17 players left - with him the short stack of the 17, right on the bubble. I so very very very badly wanted him to get busted on the bubble - I could not believe he was still in after 3 hours and 45 minutes. But his luck knew no bounds - despite being extremely short stacked, he won 4 out of 4 coin flips in a row, despite being behind when the money went in each time - and sometimes way behind. It is quite staggering to behold a run of luck like that. He made it through by knocking out the other short stack, his 10-4 somehow beating his opponents dominating 10-8 by hitting a 4. I could have wept .

But I know, I know, I know, I gotta stop getting riled at these players. They can't help it, they are acting out of ignorance. I too was equally ignorant about 6 months ago - its just I didnt have the money to support that style of play over a prolonged period. Qualifying through a field of a couple of hundred players with that style of play has almost certainly condemned him to huge future losses. He will remember the style of play that worked for him on this occasion, and try to replicate it. He will pour endless cash into rebuys in a bid to repeat the magic of the past, only to be eventualy smacked on the head by a normal distribution curve. I have no doubt this guy will lose many thousands of dollars in a short space if time if he has the means to fund it.

The lesson I have learned? Well, to stay away from games where coin flipping lemmings hang out in numbers. To me, that means staying clear of Rebuy Tourneys, all forms of Speed poker, and SNG tables below the $11 buy in mark.

Still, all's well that ends well. I am in the $300K tourney, and look forward to being the fish in that particular pond.