Advantage players in tournaments

By allowing multiple rebuys in tournaments houses are able to offer more in their guarantees. Which will draw more players to the tourneys and increase the payouts.

It is true that better players will buy back in more than awful players. In part its because they know they can compete. In part it's because bad players know they can't. Players who are around average will also buy back in if they have the money. And it will work out sometimes.

At Foxwoods they used to not allow re-buys in most of their tourneys. There were a few tournaments that had add ons but it didn't change much. About 10 years ago they changed it so all of their tourneys were re-buys. There were more entries as a result. As someone who has to travel 2 hours+ to FW (or any casino really) it matters to me whether I can buy in again or not. I imagine that is true for a lot of players coming from far away. And its probably also true that those players are better than average.

edit: When I would travel to Parx in Bensalem PA about 100 miles form where I live, so close to 2 hours away, their Big Staxx tournaments allowed re-buys which was fortunate because if you got knocked out there were no other tournaments to play in. One time, I bought in again, got AA on my first hand, was all in pre-flop vs KK and got knocked out. I bought in a third time which I was grateful for. I don't think I cashed but at least I had a chance instead of having to go home two hours after I got there.

If you really care that much about limiting excellent player's chances then I highly recommend the WSOP tournaments. In the Main event ($10,000 entry) you can only enter once even though there are 4 Day 1's. In the Senior event it used to be you could only enter once in the only Day 1. Now you can enter twice on each of the two Day 1's. Considering that it is the worst field you will ever see for a $1,000 entry I highly recommend that you age quickly. Similarly for the Super Senior again $1,000 entry with one rebuy allowed (I believe) on the single Day 1 but the field is better than the Senior. The other thing abut the WSOP is that first place money is much less % than most other places and they pay 15% of the field.

Here is the thing though. I was playing in a 6000 Crown (~$270) tournament in Prague. As we were approaching the end of the re-buy period a guy showed up and bought in. Turns out he had won a $2,900,000 tournament. He got knocked out and bought back in again. That happened 7 or 8 times. Three of those times it was at my table. And yet I survived. I ended up winning the tournament for roughly 180,000 Crowns (~$8,000) by also knocking out a player who was one of the two best players I had ever played against and who rebought in early on until he tripled his stack. Another regular who would rebuy finished second in the WSOP Main event in 2011. The majority of players in this ~$270 tournament were awesome. It was an excellent place to learn how to play better. The first 28 tournaments I played (including rebuys) at Rebuy Stars Casino Luka in Prague, I didn't cash.

If you think that casinos should not care about making money and not try to get players from far away to travel to their tournaments but instead cater to players who aren't really that good then I guess you are entitled to your opinion. But it sounds a lot like you are feeling sorry for yourself and want casinos to make the world a better place for you specifically. I think you should get over that, accept the things you cannot change and look at what you can do to make yourself a better player. Which will take courage and a lot of wisdom.

Thanks Mr Rick,

I live in Sydney Australia and have at least 6 poker rooms within 30 minutes drive that between them have a reasonable sized tournament on 7 nights a week. By reasonable size I mean USD at least $200 entry. They also have at an average 3 major series per year each. These have entry levels from USD $400 all the way up to $25K.

I used to play fairly regularly tournaments that ranged from USD $300 to $2000.

I'm never going to play professionally but over the last 15 years am somewhere in the region of USD $50k net winner.

I'm of an age that would allow me to play the WSOP Seniors/Super Seniors.

So, it's not a case of feeling sorry for myself but just in general a sense of fair play.

I work in the racing and sports betting industry as a trader, so am very familiar with p/l and variance etc etc.

Apart from the syndicates around the world who receive rebates on the turnover that they generate (in horse/harness/greyhound racing pari mutuel pools) there's not a betting type of industry in the world that helps it's winning players at the detriment of the rank and file players. If you are going to incentivise or help anyone then it needs to be the rank and file. They are the ones who keep the games going, who pay the wages etc etc. The professionals deserve to win if they're good enough on a level playing field.

Imagine if you had a golf tournament where you allowed a free shot if you weren't happy with the one you'd just had. The players who were better to begin with would have their advantage increased.

The better poker players when virtually unlimited re-entry is allowed, play loose and try and run up a big stack with the full knowledge that they can re-enter. Eventually they'll have a big stack. Not just one of them but most of them.

I haven't played in about a year for the reasons outlined. I hope somehow that there's enough people like myself that may agitate enough to get some "level field" changes made.

Think of re entry as a new tournament. Good players dont have an advantage from re entering X amount of times. Sure maybe they are more likely to do well in THAT tournament, but each buy in is a new investment with an ROI of X and that ROI goes down for most players the later they reenter.

As far as late reg goes, its actually bad players who would benefit more from buying in late with a short stack with higher variance and smaller edges.

Flattening payouts is bad for turnout. Recs love the big 1st place number.

Than you ledn for your reply.

I'll elaborate re my issues with re-entry being really bad for all bar advantage players.

No doubt that advantage players will continue to re-enter when they bust untill they believe they don't have advantage. Yes, their advantage lessens for the later they enter a tournament but I'll give an example it shows the cumulative disadvantage that all bar the better players have to contend with.

Let's assume a 1000 person tournament (freezout) that ends up with 250 people making day 2.
Let's further assume that the breakdown is 200 advantage and 800 non advantage.
It's likely that a relatively bigger percentage of advantage players will make day 2.
For the moment let's say the breakdown is 70 (advantage) and 180 (non advantage) with therefore 28% of day 2 being advantage players.

Now let's look at the same initial 1000 players but in a re-entry tournament.
More assumptions but a reasonable guesstimate.
The 200 advantage players re-enter 100 times between them so total 300 entries.
The 800 non advantage players re-enter 500 times between them so total 1300 entries.
Now we have 1600 entries with 25% making day 2 and therefore 400.
Most likely the breakdown will be 160/300 advantage players making day2 and 240/1300 non advantage players making day 2.

This will mean that advantage players now make up 40% of day 2 along with the very likelihood that a significant amount will have big stacks due to changing their playing style knowing that they can re-enter.

There's a massive difference between starting day 2 with 40% as against 28% of players being in the advantage group. Yes, the better players will always have an advantage but giving them more advantage is just plain wrong for the rest of the field.

So this is the age-old question of whether unlimited rebuys is good for the poker ecosystem.

From a personal perspective, I would love all poker tournaments to be single re-entry per flight. I've always felt that strikes the right balance between being fair to the recreational player who travels to play a poker tournament and busts early versus the perceived advantage that unlimited rebuys gives players that are heavily bankrolled. (either because they're staked, are rich, etc.)

But as I've played more poker, I've come to realize that a fair number of the players that are buying infinite to these tournaments are quite frankly, not that great. They're aggressive, but usually overly so, and they often make mistake that a decent player can capitalize on. The way tournament payout structures work it's hard to buy in 8 to 10 times per tournament and turn a profit - for example, at a typical MSPT where there's $100K up top for first, you're generally looking at needing to final table to turn a profit. Which doesn't happen very often for even the best players. The good players that rebuy multiple times are going to be tough to play against regardless.

So for me, the issue is not that these players are buying in a ton of times and juicing up the prize pool - it's that the scared money in the field is playing way too passively against these players. I've just gotten used to the idea that when I play against a well-bankrolled pro who's playing lower than their normal buy-in that they're often going to be loose and gambly, and I need to adjust my strategy accordingly. That does mean I go broke sometimes, but it also means I chip up sometimes too.

I've accepted the premise that unlimited rebuys aren't going away, so the only thing I can do is do my best to play as well as I can against them when they show up at my table.