Poker Tournament Buy In & Rebuy

Buy-In

Buy-in is the dues every player pays to join the poker tournament. The buy-in can be cash or something else. If you decide to play with money, you can use the following factors to decide on the amount of buy in:

  • The amount that you and the other players are willing (can afford) to loose.
  • How large (number of players) you want your tournament to be. A larger buy-in means less players. Therefore, if you want to host a large tournament (Charity tournaments are a good example for this), you'll be more successful finding players with a smaller buy-in.

Advice on Buy-In:

Following are some Buy-In notes that help you run your poker tournament smoother and more organized:

  • If you are playing for a large amount, it's better to set longer blind periods such as half an hour. When players pay a considerable amount of money, they want to at least stay in the game for a while. Long blind period stretches the length of the game. Also, longer blind period is an advantage to the better players as luck factors reduces. I personally suggest to choose a standard blind period that you can use regardless of the amount of buy-in.
  • Also the amount of buy-in changes the way people play. If it's a large buy-in players value their chips more than if they were playing for a smaller buy-in. Hence the game will be tighter and longer.
  • It's always a good idea to get cash only. If someone wants to write a check or take a loan and you know that you can trust the person go right ahead. Otherwise, stick to cash before the game only rule. Some players will want to write a check or take a loan.
    • It's up to you whether or not give loan or accept checks. But at the end of the tournament YOU are responsible for paying the prizes out in cash.
    • It's much easier to mention you don't have enough cash at home and can't pay out the winner if they (the borrowers) lose.
  • Write down the name of all players and mark their names "Paid" once you take the buy-in from them

Advice on Rebuys

Rebuy: happens when a player loses all of his chips and still wants to get back in the tournament. Rebuys are not always allowed. Even when they are allowed there are certain restriction such as time constraint and number of rebuys a player can do.

Imagine you're hosting a tournament with 15 players and your friend busts out early. He has to sit around and watch everyone else until a new game has started. This is where rebuys come in. The rebuy allows the player who just lost all of his chips to buy back in the tournament.

A rebuy tournament has it's own rules and constraints. Following are the most important ones:

  • The number of times that players can rebuy is set before the game. (it can be 1, 2, .. or unlimited).
  • There is only a limited period after beginning of the tournament that rebuys are allowed. For example rebuys can be allowed during the first hour or during the first 3 blinds and such.
  • The amount of rebuy is the same as the amount of buy-in.
  • It can be set as a rule before the tournament that players do not necessarily have to lose all their chips before they can rebuy. Rebuy can be allowed if a player's chips go below a certain amount. For example in a tournament where everyone started with 2500 in chips, players can be allowed to rebuy once their chips goes under 500. However
    • Players can only add enough chips to make their stack the original amount. In the above example if a player loses his chips down to 400, he can do a rebuy and receive another 2100 in chips from the tournament manager.
    • If the player wants to rebuy when he still has chips (less than 500 in the above example) he will still have to pay the full amount for rebuy.

Once you decide to have rebuys at your tournament, you need to decide how many re-buys you want to give to each player. There are two different ways that you can handle this:

  • Limited Rebury: A limited rebury is when each player can rebury only certain number of times. After that, he/she is out of tournament.
  • Unlimited Rebury: In an unlimited rebury tournament, players get to buy back as many times as they want, until the rebury period is over. The best structure for your tournament would be to allow unlimited re-buys during the first two/three blinds or the first hour. In my house tournaments I use 30 minute blinds so the first two blinds takes one hour and that's how long I usually allow the players to rebury. As you can guess, unlimited rebuy creates larger prize pools.

Effects of rebury on the game:

  1. Once rebuys are allowed in a tournament players know that they can buy back if they bust out so the game is going to be looser than normal. This varies by the amount of buy-in and rebury, but in general you are going to have a looser game with rebuys than without rebury
  2. The prize pool in a tournament with rebuys usually gets larger than you expect. Let's say if you have a $10 buy in with unlimited re buys for the first hour with 16 players. Without the rebury you have $160 in the prize pool. With the rebuy your prize pool usually doubles or triples. The reason for that is $10 is not much and once people lose they want to get back in the game so they spent another $10 and mostly don't keep track of how many times they've bought in.

Strategy Tip: If you are playing at an unlimited rebury tournament, try to double and triple up fast, but don't play too loose, and keep in mind if you are doing a rebury for the fourth or fifth time, you probably should call it the night - maybe you are just not getting the right cards. Also, after your fourth or fifth rebuy, other playersstacks are so deep that it would be hard for you to catch up.

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Last updated - January 3, 2007