Why I Hate Poker Re-Buy Tournaments

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010

Play in a poker re-buy tournament and you had better make sure that you have enough money on hand. I learned that lesson the hard way. Some days when I was bored I would head over to the local casino in the morning and buy in to their small no limit poker tournaments. On one particular day they were playing a re-buy tournament. Not really understanding the re-buy structure I decided to test it out. It was only 10 dollars to buy in and a sign hung stating ?Unlimited re-buys until first level.?

Having brought only a hundred dollars with me, I figured the most I would be out was 10 bucks. Waiting for the tourney to start, I asked around and gathered that you could buy another stack of chips equivalent to your starting chips until the first increase in blinds, if you lost all of them. Wow, cool I thought, if I lose all my chips I can get more. Only 10 bucks extra I thought, not having the intention of losing before the blinds went up. Once we started playing, it was not so cool.

I slowly realized that people at my table were playing like a bunch of maniacs. Going all in, losing and re-buying and re-buying and re-buying, they were just trying to build their chip stacks. Having been dealt actually good hands, I was getting sucked out on, getting rivered left and right and soon was in on the re-buying frenzy.

Angry that these clowns were sucking out on me, I was determined to get their chips and soon found myself out of $100 in less than a half an hour. Far more than the $10 I was originally okay to part with. To my complete dismay, after having lost all my money I watched as everyone at the table had tightened up and began to play ?real? poker after the re-buy period ended. These were not just maniacal poker players, they were regulars at the casino who made their living off newbies like me.

I headed over to the ATM, steaming and on tilt and took out another $100, that actually turned out to be $103 after being assessed ATM fees. Getting into a limit game, I quickly lost another $100, adding even more insult to injury when I realized that this table made their money off newbies who were on tilt after losing in the tournament. So much for my fun $10 day. Hey, there?s always blackjack.