Rebuy and/or late registration tourneys

Salty Mouse

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They seem gimmicky to me and generally not rewarding of good players and good play.

Do you avoid them as a rule? Play them and change your strategy? How?
 
Pascal-lf

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Rebuys are great for increasing prize pools and allowing for deeper play in the later stages without having ridiculously big fields. It also allows fish to spew off money through tilt rebuying which is good for everyone.

As for late reg, I don't think it should be an hour long, maybe 10 minutes? Sometimes I miss tournaments starting and only catch them in late reg. Although I'm not sure it affects the tournament that much seeing as they start with a normal starting stack but fewer big blinds.
 
Pyrodc

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My best results have been when playing these low BI MTTs.

Use the structure to your advantage by:

Budget on 3 BIs and 1 Addon - So you can double BI and shove if needed
Make a double Buy-In - As soon as you have paid your first blind, re-buy. This will give you a double starting stack.
Play super tight and hyper aggressive until the end of the late reg/buy-in period - Some people near the end of the late reg period will shove with atc, so you can open up your range a little
Take the addon only if it will take you to around the average stack size or above - So you aren't just feeding the chip leaders.

This is what has worked for me, use it, don't use it... ;)
 
JMTalbert

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I like the rebuys as they do increase the prize pook. Always a good thing if you cash!

My prefered way to play is to buy in once and make the most of it. I would like for that to be my only investment in the tournament. If you get busted out, but want to play, you can rebuy and maybe rebuy for double. The problem is now you have 3x buy ins invested. You need to cash now!

I would suggest not rebuying more than once. You will be on tilt and have invested too much to make it up without going pretty far. Just take a break or go play a different game for a while.

The add on is a good deal relative to your initial buy in. Usually 2000 chips when the buy in was 1500. Typically 20BB when it happens. It is usually worth taking, unless you have a very big or very small stack.

I am curious about the late registration as a stragety and saw an old locked thread about it. The regs here seem to be against it, but in the FTP rebuys, you can invest 3 buyins, get into a tournament with an average/slightly below average size stack having 40 - 45 BBs and be in a tournament where 10 - 20% of the field is gone and around 20% of the remaining players get paid. The late registration is the route I wish I had taken when I bust out early! I would like to see more discussion about this.
 
Pascal-lf

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If you're going to play a rebuy, it's +ev to always double rebuy and to invest more than 1 shot in it.
 
thebigdawg

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I usually just play on my original BI, if I make it to the break I use the add-on.
 
JMTalbert

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If you're going to play a rebuy, it's +ev to always double rebuy and to invest more than 1 shot in it.

Do you double up on your initial buy in or play for a while with the single buy in and see what happens knowing you can double rebuy in if you get KO'ed?
 
bonflizubi

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They seem gimmicky to me and generally not rewarding of good players and good play.

Do you avoid them as a rule? Play them and change your strategy? How?

Rebuy tournaments are a huge EV edge to the better players. 100+BB stacks are not uncommon and there are plenty of fish who will spew their big stacks. Generally better players are better with bigger stacks, and it allows them to wait and play solid and pick off the bad players strategically, without getting blinded down to push/fold mode early.

However, you need to be properly rolled to commit a significant number of rebuys. See below.

I usually just play on my original BI, if I make it to the break I use the add-on.

No offense, but I'm going to be honest here. You are dead/scared money adding to my equity pool in that tourny. You are at a HUGE disadvantage and shouldn't play these types of tournies as they are a bad value for you. on one bullet, you will be pushed off marginal hands that yo ushould be gambling with. Also, any good player will notice who is playing without the initial rebuy, and immediately know they are bad.

Why? Because you are not maximizing your chances.


My prefered way to play is to buy in once and make the most of it. I would like for that to be my only investment in the tournament. If you get busted out, but want to play, you can rebuy and maybe rebuy for double. The problem is now you have 3x buy ins invested. You need to cash now!

I would suggest not rebuying more than once. You will be on tilt and have invested too much to make it up without going pretty far. Just take a break or go play a different game for a while.

The add on is a good deal relative to your initial buy in. Usually 2000 chips when the buy in was 1500. Typically 20BB when it happens. It is usually worth taking, unless you have a very big or very small stack.

More dead money. And ALWAYS addon. ALWAYS

You need to budget somewhere between the initial buyin + addon to around 10 rebuys (5 reloads @ 2 rebs each if you get felted). I usually think of a 3r as playing a $24 tourny. As long as I average $24 over time in these i'm within my buyin guideline. If I spend 9 bucks, that's great. If I spend $40 that's fine too. But I plan for this going in.

JMT is looking at this wrong. If you tilt from busting your initial buyin plus rebuy, don't play this tourny. Play a freezeout.

Expect to gamble when it's a gambly table and you will have to reload a few times. The beauty of this is that often those chips come right back to you from the same guy that took them away. (Whoa is me to get a crazy start table loaded with chips and get moved before I get a chance to get them.)

Here's the other reason you guys are dead money and rebuys are so profitable. Look how many people drop out pre-addon. That is all free equity to anyone still in the game. And it's often a ridiculous number of people and dollars.
If you're going to play a rebuy, it's +ev to always double rebuy and to invest more than 1 shot in it.

Pascal gets it.

Rule: Always rebuy immediately before the first hand. Nothing like having a 2k stack open shove and a 2k caller and you are sitting on 1k with AA in the BB the very first hand. That mistake costs you when you hold. you have a 3k stack, not a 6k stack.

Always addon

Budget multi-rebuys and gamble if its a gambly table. Push small edges.

Exceptions? Satties. If it's a $10r to a $109 seat, buying in 20 times makes no sense.
 
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+1 to Bonflizubi. Gamble when the gamblins good. I had never really thought in terms of +/- EV with regard to people dropping early...but it makes sense. That's one of the reasons the fpp satellite rebuys can be so profitable, people rarely have the fpps for many buyins and the field has lost 30-50% of its players by the addon period :D

Most often the stars rebuy tournaments are 1500/buy and 3k for the add-on. I'm often willing to ship preflop with Ax suited, pocket pairs, big aces, suited connectors, etc. if I have ~6k or less. It changes from tourney to tourney based on how willing to gamble the rest of the table is and whatnot. But you shouldn't be looking to slow down until you have around a 7-10 buyin stack. Once you hit your 14k pre-addon you can nit it up.

Basically...you have to view the rebuy period as an investment period and not really part of the tournament. You have different goals during rebuy because the goal of survival is guaranteed. Instead your goal is to take as many good gambles as possible in a quest to accrue a 100bb+ stack post-rebuy period. Such a stack allows a good player to make a great many +EV moves that are unavailable to the shorter stacks which leads to better/deeper results long-haul.
 
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Pascal-lf

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FWIW found out some more info on this today - most rebuys have addons which give more chips than a rebuy for the same price. If you divide prize pool by the number of chips you get in a rebuy (say, $3) you'll therefore find they are worth less than what you paid for them. On the other hand, the addon is worth more than the money you pay for it, so it's always +EV to take the addon and always +EV to last til the addon period.

Busting out and rebuying doesn't make the tournament less profitable for you - think of your actual cost as 2BI+rebuy (always double rebuy at start) and any times you bust out just think of different tournaments...
 
JMTalbert

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Good info here. I have had some success both with a double buy in and a single. I have also cashed with the double buy in plus add on at the cut off break.

The points about thinking of the pre-add on period as an initial investment period separate from the tournament after registration locks and considering the rebuy after busting a separate tournament entry are good ones. My issue was/is thinking of it as investing more in the same game (prize pool) vs. a whole new one. That makes a difference in how to view cashing.

I guess you have to really be doing something wrong to necessitate more than two double rebuys before the cut off. So, would 5BI invested be a limit? Do you even set one as long as the prize pool is good? I remember reading that you want last cashing position to pay for at least three buy ins (1 Initial, 1 Rebuy/Double, & 1 Add On).

I want to invest as little as possible, but with good returns. I have always liked deep stack tournaments and when I originally played the rebuys, I did so using the double buy in play. I appreciate the increase in variance that it provides. After taking some bad losses early in tournaments due to poor plays by both me and some opponents, I changed my game plan. If you guys think starting the game that way is the best risk/reward play, I'll go back that strategy for a bit.
 
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I guess you have to really be doing something wrong to necessitate more than two double rebuys before the cut off.

Why would you do something wrong just cause you need to take a couple of double re-buys?

Also your thinking about having to get the investment back is a little bit wrong IMO.

Let me try to explain it by an example.
Lets say that you are playing a cash game, and you have a 3BB/100hands profit over a big sample.
You start a session by running really bad, and losing 10 buyins.
Now when you continue playing your expected profit is still 3BB/100 hands, which means that you cant expect to win it all back in the coming hr.
 
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From what I've seen the min-payout for getting ITM is usually around 4-5x the buyin. Many of the good players are willing to invest more than that because they don't intend to just squeak ITM they intend to take the whole thing down.

On the subject of good rebuy tourneys-> Stars runs a nightly $3R 40k guaranteed. I have played in it both of the last 2 mondays and on neither one did the prize pool actually reach the guarantee. Last week Stars had to add $1200 or so to the pool and last night they had to add almost $4k.

edit: it's not about doing things right or wrong to spend more than a second double-rebuy (i.e. 5 buy-ins total). You're taking gambles to get a big stack, whether that takes the initial 2x or takes 4 double rebuys to get is just a matter of luck.

*Example hand: this was the 3rd hand in the tourney last night. I opened UTG with A8s (t60), got 3 calls behind then the BTN 3bets (t180) and the SB ships t3000. For a person playing to get a big stack (like I was) this is a snap-call/repush spot. A8s is a fine hand to shoot for a big stack with during rebuys...obviously I would never really do these things if it were a freezeout or the rebuy period was over. Oh...results for the people that like them -> initial 3bettor ships as well, flips 55, pusher flips QQ...I spike an A on the flop and hold up to hit ~9500 on the 4th hand :).

I was ~25-30% equity when the chips went in above and got lucky. Had I not gotten lucky I just double rebuy again to the same stack-size and take another shot later. Some tourneys you hit the first flip-y spot, some you miss 4 in a row and it costs. It's not terribly relevant how soon it happens as long as you get there.
 
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Pascal-lf

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Good info here. I have had some success both with a double buy in and a single. I have also cashed with the double buy in plus add on at the cut off break.

The points about thinking of the pre-add on period as an initial investment period separate from the tournament after registration locks and considering the rebuy after busting a separate tournament entry are good ones. My issue was/is thinking of it as investing more in the same game (prize pool) vs. a whole new one. That makes a difference in how to view cashing.

I guess you have to really be doing something wrong to necessitate more than two double rebuys before the cut off. So, would 5BI invested be a limit? Do you even set one as long as the prize pool is good? I remember reading that you want last cashing position to pay for at least three buy ins (1 Initial, 1 Rebuy/Double, & 1 Add On).

I want to invest as little as possible, but with good returns. I have always liked deep stack tournaments and when I originally played the rebuys, I did so using the double buy in play. I appreciate the increase in variance that it provides. After taking some bad losses early in tournaments due to poor plays by both me and some opponents, I changed my game plan. If you guys think starting the game that way is the best risk/reward play, I'll go back that strategy for a bit.

Let's say you bust 4BI rebuying in the early stages of a tournament. Instead of rebuying again, you and play another tournament, which costs 2BI.

What's the difference between doing this and rebuying for another 2BI? Nothing. :)

And it's +EV to double rebuy because any edge is exaggerated.

BTW, don't follow the above strategy. Play tight in the early stages as you want to make it to the addon stage cos the addon is where the added value on. Plus even a quadruple up in the first level is worth nothing by the middle stages of a tournament. You'll be burning money doing the above - A8s should not be opened UTG and should not be calling a 3 way all in, simple.
 
Debi

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I love re-buys for the same reasons Bonflizubi states. I play as many as I can within my bankroll.

I don't allot as many re-buys as he does - but it is very very rare I would need more than the initial re-buy, 2 more re-buys and the add-on. I can usually build a pretty big stack taking advantage of the people who don't make the initial re-buy.

The 2R1A's are awesome. You can start with 7500 chips and have double or triple what others on the table have.
 
bonflizubi

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Let's say you bust 4BI rebuying in the early stages of a tournament. Instead of rebuying again, you and play another tournament, which costs 2BI.

What's the difference between doing this and rebuying for another 2BI? Nothing. :)

And it's +EV to double rebuy because any edge is exaggerated.

BTW, don't follow the above strategy. Play tight in the early stages as you want to make it to the addon stage cos the addon is where the added value on. Plus even a quadruple up in the first level is worth nothing by the middle stages of a tournament. You'll be burning money doing the above - A8s should not be opened UTG and should not be calling a 3 way all in, simple.

Actually I don't have a problem with his strategy- at the right table. If everyone is tight I wouldn't do it. But at a gambly table? I just might.

if we are likely getting 3 or 4 allins, I'm stuffing my 89ss in there every time for example.
 
bonflizubi

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The 2R1A's are awesome. You can start with 7500 chips and have double or triple what others on the table have.

If you want to play really deep and not worry about budget. play these like dakota says. There's a $4.40 on stars that's a 2r1a and it plays very very deep with plenty of spewers.

It's all about game selection.

And FWIW last year I had a $5500 chop for first and a 3rd place for over $3k in the stars 3r. In one case I only had to buyin for a rebuy and an addon - $9. Just the way it played out. In the other I think I spent $21. So Initial + instant rebuy, plus 2 double rebuys, plus an addon. It's just how the table dynamics played out. I did what was necessary to get a stack going in the addon period.

End of day, you need to adjust to your tables, and be able to afford the style they are playing. And if htey are maniacal, you need to spend to keep up with them. You are at a tremendous disadvantage when 3 guys are gambling it up and sitting on 36k stacks when you have9k hitting the addon. They have inifinitely better chances to win.

And it's play to win, not play to mincash and get my money back. ALL profit is in the top 3's. Everything else just gets you to breakeven. Ultimately that is the argument for playing/paying for a stack early.
 
Pascal-lf

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Actually I don't have a problem with his strategy- at the right table. If everyone is tight I wouldn't do it. But at a gambly table? I just might.

if we are likely getting 3 or 4 allins, I'm stuffing my 89ss in there every time for example.

Because you're spewing money when you can wait for better spots?

You are at a tremendous disadvantage when 3 guys are gambling it up and sitting on 36k stacks when you have9k hitting the addon. They have inifinitely better chances to win.

No you don't? When you hit final table average will be like 1 million each. Taking gambles at the beginning in 3/4 way pots with hands that are never going to have decent equity against ridic ranges isn't sensible - they are spewer gamblers, wait til you've got a half decent hand and iso them HU...
 
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No you don't? When you hit final table average will be like 1 million each. Taking gambles at the beginning in 3/4 way pots with hands that are never going to have decent equity against ridic ranges isn't sensible - they are spewer gamblers, wait til you've got a half decent hand and iso them HU...
Well...you can wait the entire rebuy period and never find the hand you want if you're playing a table full of maniacs. And of course, when you do wait 35 minutes of the rebuy period to ship QQ pre and get 3-4 callers with random Axs/78s/etc. you will lose your QQ over 50% of the time. I pay $$ to get a big stack early because I feel I can leverage said big-stack (post rebuy period) to drastically increase my chances of winning the tournament. Which is worth a great deal more than the 3-4 more buy-ins i spend (on average) getting a big stack.

Also...who cares that 20k chips means almost nothing by the time you're deep in the tournament? We're not playing crazy so we can have a 20k stack at some random middle/late stage of the tournament. We gamble to have those 20k chips when the blinds are 75/150 and so we can grow it to those millions that much more easily.

edit: of course, as Bonflizubi said, it's all about your table. If my table during the rebuy period is full of nut peddlers I won't shove my stack around willy-nilly...I'll probably cry to myself a little (damn tightwads!) and play more of a standard game.
 
the lab man

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And it's play to win, not play to mincash and get my money back. ALL profit is in the top 3's. Everything else just gets you to breakeven. Ultimately that is the argument for playing/paying for a stack early.
^^^^ This part I like
 
Pascal-lf

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Well...you can wait the entire rebuy period and never find the hand you want if you're playing a table full of maniacs. And of course, when you do wait 35 minutes of the rebuy period to ship QQ pre and get 3-4 callers with random Axs/78s/etc. you will lose your QQ over 50% of the time. I pay $$ to get a big stack early because I feel I can leverage said big-stack (post rebuy period) to drastically increase my chances of winning the tournament. Which is worth a great deal more than the 3-4 more buy-ins i spend (on average) getting a big stack.

Also...who cares that 20k chips means almost nothing by the time you're deep in the tournament? We're not playing crazy so we can have a 20k stack at some random middle/late stage of the tournament. We gamble to have those 20k chips when the blinds are 75/150 and so we can grow it to those millions that much more easily.

edit: of course, as Bonflizubi said, it's all about your table. If my table during the rebuy period is full of nut peddlers I won't shove my stack around willy-nilly...I'll probably cry to myself a little (damn tightwads!) and play more of a standard game.

I'm not saying wait 35 minutes of the rebuy period to ship QQ pre with like 4BB, I'm saying take advantage of value spots which don't involve you getting it with terrible equity vs other people's ranges in multiway pots which risk you busting out early. Because people play rebuys so badly you can widen your value range for shoving and expect to get paid off. Even the $1 rebuys I've played don't have 3-4 people calling off whole stacks with rags against medium size stacks.

What does it matter how many chips you have at in the early stages anyway? If you are chip leader with 20k and 2nd place has 5k, that's great, but your effective stack at most is 5k. There is no incentive to go around calling off light early in a tournament with a massive number of runners, and I don't agree that having a big stack gives you that much more leverage during the middle stacks - it does during late stages when you can bully nits around who want to make pay jumps, but in the middle stages it's just comfortable as opposed to a huge advantage.

^^^^ This part I like

I know all profit is in the top 3, there is no need to tell me. What I'm saying is that getting a big stack is burning you money, not getting you into the top 3. Having a big stack with 1k gone in a 5k runner tournament is fairly irrelevant in the long term as to your chances of winning the tournament.

Seems to me a lot of attempted justification for gambling with bad hands, shoving light, seeing lots of flops, etc, as opposed to any decent arguments. Sorry if that sounds harsh.
 
thebigdawg

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No offense, but I'm going to be honest here. You are dead/scared money adding to my equity pool in that tourny. You are at a HUGE disadvantage and shouldn't play these types of tournies as they are a bad value for you. on one bullet, you will be pushed off marginal hands that yo ushould be gambling with. Also, any good player will notice who is playing without the initial rebuy, and immediately know they are bad.

Why? Because you are not maximizing your chances.

So let me get this straight, lets say I play in a re-buy/add on tourney....170 people get in, we are down to the last 20 and i'm in with my original BI then people know that I am bad?

I don't want too play marginal hands early and if it don't work out then just re-buy. I think that is a donk logic, I have played 3 re-buy/add-on tourneys in the last 5 days, 2 of them I cashed in and I never once re-bought (I did add-on in all.)

Usually in the early stages in these tourneys on Carbon all you have to do is play tight and wait till you have a good hand, and when you do just push all in and a donk will call with something weak. I think you have to wait till you get put out to re-buy in the Carbon tourneys, you can't just add your stack during the tourney. I don't know if you can just add to your stack in the middle of a tourney on a tourney on other sites like PS and Fultilt.
 
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Pascal-lf

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Rebuy immediately if you can - a bigger starting stack gives you more time before push/fold situations to find spots to outmanoeuvre opponents. This is different to having a ridiculously large stack because you have taken a lot of bad gambles partly because the cost of the rebuy guarantees you an extra 1.5k chips which you don't have to play for, and partly because effective stacks will quickly reach 2x initial buyin as other players instantly rebuy and double up early so you don't just have a ton of extra chips sitting around doing nothing.
 
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What does it matter how many chips you have at in the early stages anyway? If you are chip leader with 20k and 2nd place has 5k, that's great, but your effective stack at most is 5k. There is no incentive to go around calling off light early in a tournament with a massive number of runners, and I don't agree that having a big stack gives you that much more leverage during the middle stacks - it does during late stages when you can bully nits around who want to make pay jumps, but in the middle stages it's just comfortable as opposed to a huge advantage.

I know all profit is in the top 3, there is no need to tell me. What I'm saying is that getting a big stack is burning you money, not getting you into the top 3. Having a big stack with 1k gone in a 5k runner tournament is fairly irrelevant in the long term as to your chances of winning the tournament.

Seems to me a lot of attempted justification for gambling with bad hands, shoving light, seeing lots of flops, etc, as opposed to any decent arguments. Sorry if that sounds harsh.
Not harsh so much as wrong.

1)
Let's start by touching on ICM. Obviously you don't apply ICM to your early/mid-game play as it matters more for big money jumps/flat payout structures. I'm not worried about where/how to apply it, I'm more interested about how they determine ICM.

Standard ICM modeling essentially assumes that your equity for finishing the tournament in first is directly related to your chip stack. So your odds of taking first at any given time, according to ICM, is 'stack size/total chips in tournament'. From there they use some recursive math to work out odds of taking 2nd/3rd/etc., do some averaging and voila: you get your $EV.

The point is that as far as ICM is concerned your odds of finishing 1st are directly proportional to your stack size at any given time. So having more chips = better odds of first. If I have double your stack, ICM assumes I'm twice as likely to take 1st.

2)
Considering you're coming from cash poker I really can't understand how you undervalue stack size so much. There's a reason players hated short-stackers and 'non-max buyin' is often a signal of fishiness.

In these rebuy events we're discussing many people play a donkey style early and many stacks wind up being large. Thus, the average stack size is in the range of 40-60 bb's for most of the early/middle game.

Having more chips and deeper stacks means you have more options open to you. There is more merit to running a multi street bluff because you have the stacks to apply appropriate pressure and the opponents have the chips to fold. You get to play wider in LP because you actually have the implied odds to flat with suited connectors and the like. Etc.

So let me get this straight, lets say I play in a re-buy/add on tourney....170 people get in, we are down to the last 20 and i'm in with my original BI then people know that I am bad?

I don't want too play marginal hands early and if it don't work out then just re-buy. I think that is a donk logic, I have played 3 re-buy/add-on tourneys in the last 5 days, 2 of them I cashed in and I never once re-bought (I did add-on in all.)

Usually in the early stages in these tourneys on Carbon all you have to do is play tight and wait till you have a good hand, and when you do just push all in and a donk will call with something weak. I think you have to wait till you get put out to re-buy in the Carbon tourneys, you can't just add your stack during the tourney. I don't know if you can just add to your stack in the middle of a tourney on a tourney on other sites like PS and Fultilt.
I'm not sure you're speaking of the same kind of rebuy tournaments we are. The tournaments we discuss start in a rebuy period that lasts a finite amount of time so there is never an option to rebuy in the middle of the tournament. You'll also never see one of these lose 80% of its field before the rebuy period is over. That would just be absurd...and a huge profit to anyone that just spent the $$ to stick around.

What Bon meant is that if you start the tournament and stick to a 1500 chip stack when you are allowed to rebuy to 3k people would assume you're bad.
 
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Pascal-lf

Pascal-lf

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Standard ICM modeling essentially assumes that your equity for finishing the tournament in first is directly related to your chip stack. So your odds of taking first at any given time, according to ICM, is 'stack size/total chips in tournament'. From there they use some recursive math to work out odds of taking 2nd/3rd/etc., do some averaging and voila: you get your $EV.

The point is that as far as ICM is concerned your odds of finishing 1st are directly proportional to your stack size at any given time. So having more chips = better odds of first. If I have double your stack, ICM assumes I'm twice as likely to take 1st..

Now I'll happily admit I don't know ICM, but I have common sense. Simple ICM doesn't take into account the huge edge any half-decent player has over the rest of the field, and as such, I would assume my chance of winning is definitely higher than someone with 5 times as many chips as me who is playing like a crazy maniac.

If my edge is a large amount, getting into marginal spots with gambles surely doesn't make any sense because my edge will allow me to get into better, more +EV spots later in the tournament.

Having more chips and deeper stacks means you have more options open to you. There is more merit to running a multi street bluff because you have the stacks to apply appropriate pressure and the opponents have the chips to fold.
The first part is definitely true. I alluded to it in my post where I discussed effective stacks. To the second part of the post, I don't think running multi street bluffs at the micros ever makes any sense, let alone if you feel that it will fail enough that you need enough chips in your stack to cover the ones you've lost.

Sorry if you've misunderstood me - having a big stack is good. But taking -EV spots when there are plenty of +EV spots to gain that big stack is not good. There are tons of easy places to pick up chips in micros, as you've noted yourself several times by talking about tables full of people happy to gamble - when a table is loose, you don't adjust by becoming loose and gambling with them, you adjust by tightening up and value betting a wider range knowing you'll get paid off more.

EDIT: If anything I say doesn't make sense just point it out and I'll try and tell you what I mean, I'm pretty dosed up on caffeine and posting here to take a break from an essay I'm doing so I'm not in the best mental state!
 
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