FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#033 – Total Rebuy, or Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Busted

Posted by Editor | Filed under Gus Hansen

I tried to do a little research on Full Tilt the other night, checking out the rebuy tournaments. I learned a lot – including about some things having nothing to do with rebuy tournaments – and made some new friends. I also made an enemy or two, but like we say back in Chicago, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple legs.”

At 8:30 PM local time, I signed up for two rebuy tournaments, the $10 + $1 and the $1 (no rake).

Poker at the Mansion

I had played the rebuy tournaments during their first incarnation on Full Tilt, back in the olden days of January 25-26. Now those were some wild times! In the first $1 tournament, there were over $2,000 in rebuys and first place paid $700. I played a $10-rebuy the next morning and everyone in the tournament was railbirding everyone else, buddies from having braved as many as half a dozen rebuy tourneys together. (I asked how many tournaments some of these guys had played and received the same answer: “All of them.”)

“I haven’t been to sleep yet. But I gotta rest because there’s a $30 rebuy in five hours.”

“In the $3 rebuy last night, I swear one guy paid $100. His table had over 100,000 in chips.”

“I’m never playing another tournament without a rebuy.”

I played one of those $3-rebuy tourneys and it was like playing poker in a hot tub at the Playboy Mansion: wild, indulgent, supposedly pleasurable, disorienting.

Therefore, it was no surprise to me when I heard that the rebuy mechanism somehow crashed Full Tilt Poker. The system couldn’t take all that excitement. (Naturally, I was having my one and only positive experience in a rebuy tournament, with above-average chips in the $30-rebut and, just as important, not a zillion rebuys in the process. Full Tilt made good on the voided tournament based on their formula, which seemed reasonable enough to me – everyone remaining gets their buy-in back, the remainder being divided based on chip count – but several people have complained about it. I suppose it would be better if they also made good on tournament guarantees when there’s an overlay, as was the case when the system went down during Super-Bowl-Sunday-depleted tournaments.)

Poker in Purgatory

I had played some rebuy tournaments right after Full Tilt fixed the problem and reinstituted them, and even finished fourth in one, but the giddy excitement of the enterprise was missing. I had played in a $30-rebuy event that was poorly attended and the players were extremely stingy about rebuying and adding on. Nevertheless, the amount of chips in play meant that no one was compelled to push their hands, and no one did. So we had this tiny group, playing for a tiny amount of money, folding hand after hand. It seemed even the individual hands dragged on forever.

The Buck(s) Stop(s) Here

I hopped into the two smaller buy-in rebuy events ($10 and $1) to see if they, at least, still felt like we were high school students without parental supervision for the weekend. The $1 event actually has a motto in one of the windows in the tournament lobby: “You don’t have to be crazy to play in this tournament, but it helps.”

At my table, on the very first hand of the $1 tourney, a player went all-in with A-6 and was called by a player with A-7. A-6 won and A-7 took his $1 loss and left. I have found this to be a pretty consistent reason for players choosing to quit rebuy tournaments without rebuying: they take a bad beat. Normally, if you think you have an edge over the field (which you must believe if you’re playing, though it’s academic in a $1 tournament), you should rebuy. If someone gets lucky to beat you, wouldn’t that enhance your feeling that you’re better than the field, or at least dissuade you from feeling you got beat because you are an inferior player? Yet I see it in every tournament. The guy who takes a bad beat packs it in because “the cards are against him.” If people believe that way, they are right to quit; their error is playing poker to begin with.

On the third hand of the $1 tourney, I raised in late position with 4-3s. I can’t even answer why. But the button moved all-in and both blinds called. I folded. The big blind had A-A, winning a big pot over J-7s and K-Qo.

But the promise fizzled. On the seventh hand, I raised three times the big blind in early position with K-Qs, and everybody folded. Everybody folded? No one could muster an A-7 or J-7?

The numbers told the story; after the first couple minutes, even in the $1 tournament, everyone played real poker. In the $10 + $1 tournament, there were 147 starters. 40 of them, me included, rebought immediately, to start with 3,000 chips instead of the initial 1,500. After 5 minutes, there were a total of 74 rebuys; after 10 minutes, 104; after 20 minutes 136; after 30 minutes, 162; after 45 minutes 190. At the first break, there were 101 players left. There had been 229 total rebuys and 86 players, again including me, added on 2,000 chips for $10. The average chip stack was 7,200 as we prepared to play 60-120.

In the $1 tournament, 392 players started. We got just 1,000 chips to start, and 75 of us instantly rebought. After 5 minutes, that total was 174; after 10, 267; after 20, 408; after 30, 498; after 45, 630. 239 players had stuck around beyond the first break. There had been 775 rebuys and 203 add-ons. The average chip stack was 6,100 and blinds at the next level would be 50-100.

So what do these numbers mean to me? The average entrant in the $10 tournament paid just over 3 buy-ins. In the $1 tourney, it was only slightly higher, about 3.5. The days of players heaving their money pell-mell into the rebuy pool are over. In the first $1-rebuy event, first place paid over $700. It paid $280 in this one.

Throwing Around Dollars Like Beach Towels

Suffice to say, if the $10 guys are springing for little more than the initial buy-in and the add-on, I have to assume that the $20-$30 players are throwing around rebuys like manhole covers. That was true in my brief experience. I have a scrap of paper from a $20-rebuy that I played, where 57 players made a total of just 73 rebuys. Another scrap from a $30-rebuy notes 92 starters and just 110 rebuys. (Unfortunately, the same note tallies 4 rebuys and an add-on for me, and no information about my finishing in the money, from which you can infer that I did not.)

So I didn’t find the Mardi Gras I was hoping for, but it still proved fun and interesting. I was King of the World at the start of the $10 tournament, among the chip leaders for part of the hour. Other than my initial rebuy and the add-on, I didn’t spend another dime. As is often the case when I play, the chat was lively. Between the people who read my old blog, all the Tilters reading this one, the players familiar with Suicide King, the people who want to complain about my play, and all the friends and enemies from past tables who follow me around, it’s a production.

PokerFreak666 was one of several to ask me when/if I’m getting my own avatar. In fact, I am getting an avatar – it’s for the publicity value when the Full Tilt Tournament Edition is released in June – but it takes a long time. It took Gus Hansen 5-6 months to get his and he’s GUS HANSEN. Lynette Chan, who’s won about a zillion dollars in Full Tilt tournaments, still has the avatar of an igloo-builder. As high an opinion as I have of myself, this is an easy one to bring me down to earth: I am not the highest priority of the Full Tilt art department.

PokerFreak666: What do I have to do to get mentioned in your blog, knock you out?
Michael Craig: No, I have to knock you out.

PokerFreak then told me that the way he was running, that shouldn’t be any problem. The way it worked out, I went out first, and PokerFreak is now immortalized here. Don’t let it go to your head, buddy.

I eventually cashed in the $1 tournament, making $8. Considering how much I spent and that I had to pay for my own food, I’m considering contacting my old neighbors from 1972 in Royal Oak, Michigan and seeing if they still want me to watch their sleeping baby while they go to a movie. Of course, the kid’s 35 by now, so I should be able to jack up my hourly rate at least a little.

Bucks to the Future

Maybe Full Tilt will inject some life in these rebuy tournaments. They have the potential to be a lot of fun, though they are mostly a service to the players rather than moneymaker to the site. Tilt gets no rake from the rebuys. In addition, because the tournaments take so long, players conceivably aren’t playing other tournaments during that period. (I know I skipped a couple of my regular tournaments because I was well along in a rebuy tournament, though eventually the tournaments dragged on so long that I started shopping for pens online and doing word puzzles.)

Full Tilt is offering two FTOPS rebuy tournaments, PLO and No Limit Hold ‘Em. After the FTOPS, they are offering some rebuy guarantee events on a regular basis.

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