Minimum Rebuy Strategy
Posted by matmat
Posted by
matmat
posted in
Low Stakes
Minimum Rebuy Strategy
I recently saw a post by Aaron Been where he stated, "I play a strategy where I late-register and never double rebuy in order to maximize the value of the addon.", he also mentioned that he came to this approach after discussions with Ike Haxton and Justin Bonomo who also seemed to agree this is the best approach to rebuys.
Over the past few years I have seen a change in approach to rebuys from a splash around to try to build a big stack style of a few years ago to a realisation that keeping rebuy factors down as crucial to maximizing ROI.
However as far as I am aware most regs still take a double stack wherever possible in order to maximize their edge over weaker players.
What are people's views on this minimum rebuy approach and if you think it is the correct approach does it remain as applicable in low stakes rebuys where the edge between the best players and weak players at those levels is arguably larger than in say a $109r.
Also would this approach be applicable to 2R1A tournaments where the rebuy stack is the same size as the inital stack? Should we be trying to play these tournaments as a freezeout and not taking the rebuy and addon where possible?
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I think I am starting to understand this topic but I don't have better players to bounce my thoughts off of.
First I would point out if maximizing our roi was our goal, it would cause us to move down in stakes.
I realize this may seem too basic and fundamental to point out, but it is skipping such fundamentals that leads experienced players to approach incorrect conclusions.
A few counter arguments to that idea:
1) By not playing the first hour, he is removing the opportunity to play the softest hour of the tournament. There will be fish who play and bust that he will never have an opportunity to play against. Myself, and nearly everyone I know, have a much higher win rates in the early levels. A 10bb/100 win rate over the first hour may equate to 150 to 400 extra chips without including the gambly nature of rebuys.
2) Additional chips may reduce ROI but increase money won. Consider playing the Big 11. For $11, you get 3000 chips. What if you were given the opportunity to have 6000 chips for $21, or 30,000 chips for $101? Would you do it? At what point would giving yourself 3000 more chips not increase your equity by at least $10? Your ROI on a $101 buyin probably isn't as high as on a $11 buyin, but I'd bet that most good players would make more money per game.
If you are playing a rebuy tournament where you have little to no edge, Aaron's strategy makes a lot of sense: harnessing the extra equity from the disproportionate $$/chip addon size can give you an edge where you may not have had one. We just have to make a decision at what point it is worth taking the rebuy. I don't know precisely the ROI required, but I don't think we need more than a small edge for registering early and rebuying to be worth more money than dodging the rebuy period. In general, I would never play a rebuy tournament where I felt my edge was so small that I couldn't rebuy profitably.
The change from splashing around in rebuy periods to just standard solid poker, trying to make +EV decisions while rebuying when need be, seems like a natural progression. You're just not going to make more money if you're in for 3 or 4x the BI in every rebuy tournament.
I tend to agree with everything Justin said above. Let's try to stack some weaker players, while having a back up plan of being able to rebuy if need be. Having said that, we must be wrong, haha. Because if Ike and ZeeJustin agree that buying in last minute for the minimum is optimal, than it's optimal. They're knowledge of poker and the math behind it is more valuable than any our experiences playing these tournaments. Now having said that, I wonder if those comments weren't taken out of a certain context or referring to a specific tournament. I'm purely speculating here, but it just seems like quite the statement to make absolutely. I tend to take the full rebuy, thinking that I want to cover and be able to stack weaker players. I'd bet that Ike and Justin would argue that there's no way to quantify the affect this would have on ones ROI. They seem to have concluded that buying in minimum is the only way to entirely quantify the situation, while also leading the maximum ROI. Making a lot of assumptions and sheer guesses here, though.
OP do you have a link to the post so we can get some context? Did it up and paste it here if you can please. Thanks.
Also interested in a link! I'm wondering if Ike and Justin were making these comments in regards to only rebuys which they'd play - games that would obviously have tough fields so it's not like an 11r where you'd hate to ever miss a single hand because you can accumulate so many chips in the first hour versus all the recreational players.
I'm wondering the exact same thing Tom. I suspect there's some discretion on our part in which we can choose to play the full rebuy / full rebuy hour. At least that's what I plan to do as I experiment with this. Though it's possible that on strictly mathematical grounds that their method is optimal irrespective of the buyin.
Ive had a lot of discussion about this topic with friends over the last few months. I still cant see how late registering the softer rebuys is better than starting from the beginning. Many of the weaker players do not even opt to rebuy and you lose your opportunity to realize your edge with deeper stacks vs weaker players. Plus many players choose to gamble more during the rebuy period, particularly if you have half starting stack anyway (its just 1 rebuy to gamble with you!). I really do believe that in most 1r1a style tournies that not taking the 2nd rebuy is best in most scenarios, especially since often other strong players will have good absolute position on you with deep stacks. You do also get the opportunity to buy back in and take advantage of the addon if something bad happens.
Ive changed the way I play some of the harder tournaments, but I still find myself double buying when my table is friendly.
Bump for link!
I do think late regging is a solid strategy for the 2x and 3x turbo rebuys with a huge addon/rebuy ratio.
For standard rebuys I would always prefer playing the deep and soft rebuy period.
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