Someone please explain rebuys/addons to me.
I like to play freeze outs - You buy in for a set amount- And thats it.
No rebuying 5 times within the first 10 minutes as you repeatedly go all in with 9/2.
So can someone please explain to me why so many tourneys have either unlimited rebuys for the first hour or so - or one rebuy - or one addon - or rebuys AND an addon..etc.,etc.,?
Common consensus with most people I talk to about it say that its for the tourney runners to take a cut - while pretending not to - since there's no way to track the rebuys or addons.
Personally I would prefer to pay for a freeze out - and a fee - instead of a rebuy with no fee.
Like sunday - I played 60 dollar buy in tourney freeze out. No rebuys. 50 was for the game - 10 was for the house. Sounds good to me. At least its on the up and up - And if you knock someone out - they're out. Instead of coming back and after you knocking them out for the 3rd time in a row - they end up knocking you out later on just before the final table. (Didnt happen to me - saw it happen to another guy though)
Seems to defeat the purpose of no limit. Its more of a limit thing.
Anyways. Please fill me in on the justification of rebuys
No rebuying 5 times within the first 10 minutes as you repeatedly go all in with 9/2.
So can someone please explain to me why so many tourneys have either unlimited rebuys for the first hour or so - or one rebuy - or one addon - or rebuys AND an addon..etc.,etc.,?
Common consensus with most people I talk to about it say that its for the tourney runners to take a cut - while pretending not to - since there's no way to track the rebuys or addons.
Personally I would prefer to pay for a freeze out - and a fee - instead of a rebuy with no fee.
Like sunday - I played 60 dollar buy in tourney freeze out. No rebuys. 50 was for the game - 10 was for the house. Sounds good to me. At least its on the up and up - And if you knock someone out - they're out. Instead of coming back and after you knocking them out for the 3rd time in a row - they end up knocking you out later on just before the final table. (Didnt happen to me - saw it happen to another guy though)
Seems to defeat the purpose of no limit. Its more of a limit thing.
Anyways. Please fill me in on the justification of rebuys
Comments
Not reputable places. The most common "use" for rebuys is to build the prizepool. this way, a tournament with a $500 entry fee with 500 players ($250,000) suddenly has a prizepool of 1 million if everyone rebuys once.
some veteran tournament players love rebuy tourneys because "dead money" can contribute a great deal to the overall prizepool.
It's pretty shady if a place is taking a cut out of rebuys. if anything, the tournament should be: buyin + reg fee and that's it regardless of rebuys and addons.
How else to justify it? If I've bought in to a $100 tourney and bust out in the first round or two, it may be in your best interest if possible to rebuy right back in and take another crack...only difference is, you now have $200 invested rather than $100 for those who didn't rebuy. I also may be more likely to gamble in the first round or two knowing there is zero risk of being eliminated.
Does that answer your question?
I prefer a freezeout as well, but the majority of the players who come to our events, like the rebuy's because some times you don't get the 74 players Â
If I can't hit my attendance number that I need to cover costs, hence the rebuy's, and we announce how many rebuy's are purchased, and what was taken for the cost. Most organizers wont tell you their expenses for the purpose of keeping a large profit.
Yes, we do try to make a couple of bucks here and there for ourselves, but not to the extent that a other organizer do. We are not in this to get rich, I personally just want a place for people to play, including myself.
I will not play in any tournaments, home games or cash games that are not hosted by forum members just for that reason. I don't care how much an organizer makes, as long as my "potential winnings" are justifiable for the hours/rebuy's/addons that are accumulated. And I know that the people on this forum (more often than not, it is the new organizers that feel this, and some, like me at one point take it personal, which there is no need to) are sometimes asked to justify their intentions. If they say "this one is for profit on our part", I do some math to see if it is worth it, with established forum organizers, it usually is.
I can and will vouch for the established organizers on this forum, they run a straight up game, and if your not sure, ask the forum members or the organizers themselves.
Rob
I guess what I should of told her is to just do some quick math and take it from there, but when you're at a big tournament with unlimited rebuys it is very hard to tell.
I personally have divulged information into the forum to all members, and mean every little bit of it, expenses/ rebuy's/ payout etc. when I first posted here. At first I took the Q&A's as a personal attack, and later realized "hey, your the new guy, no one knows you, they have to ask", but at first I had to explained my reasonings, justified what I had to justify, and now I have a pretty good show of forum members at my events.
There has been at least one event that was spoken about that was a complete scam, it is in this section, and I assure you, now that we know, we won't play there.
Like I said before, if I go to a tournament, I don't care who makes what, as long the prize(s) and my time can justified in my own mind.
I've never bashed anyone is this community, no one has given me reason to yet. I'm hoping to make it out to KW's game too. What I was trying to get across was if you don't know the people that is running the tourney just to do the math and decide from there if you will play there again.
I fully do believe that people need to do the math, because the scam artists that are out there make it hard for legit TD's to get started. Hopefully I do see you at one of my games, and if not, hopefully I will see you at the final table in the KWSOP.
And I also hope you don't feel like I was reacting harsh to your comments.
Rob
I've played at a number of tournaments hosted by people on this forum. All but one were very good and most didn't take a rake. One guy took a 15% rake of the buy-ins AND re-buys AND add-ons PLUS an extra charge for the dealers. It worked out to something like 60% of the original buy-in. Excessive? I think so. I haven't gone back.
Why not? Some tournaments will do it this way, and some will not. At various tournaments, I have seen B&M casinos, legitimate online poker sites, and legitimate home games take a house fee from re-buys and add-ons.
The important things are
1. Informing the players of the procedure you will be using to deduct the house fees. Preferably, without them having to ask the TD.
2. Being credible in the accounting of the number of re-buys and add-ons.
Just because some tournaments do not take a house fee from the re-buys or add-on does not make it a rule for all TD's to follow. On the other hand, economics dictates that players who are well informed will choose (apart from other factors such as availability) the tournaments with the lowest house fees.
If I had a choice, I'd naturally play in a rebuy tournament that took a 9% house fee from the original buy-in only over a tournament with a 9% fee taken from all portions of the buy-in. These considerations only really start to get interesting if faced with choices such as deciding whether to play in a rebuy tournament with a house fee which is 30% taken from the original buy-in only, or a rebuy tournament with a 10% house fee taken from all portions of the total buy-in.
For a tournament with re-buys and/or add-ons, this statistic is irrelevant.
The house fee in any tournament is best measured by the percentage of the total buy-in that is taken by the house.1 In your example, this seems to be 15% (plus the "extra fee for the dealers" that you mentioned).
ScottyZ
1Technically, the relevant statistic for re-buy tournaments is the house fee as a percentage of the expected total buy-in.
Let me tell you how Terry and I run our events.
We do charge an entry fee, it is usually 20% of the initial buy-in. 100+20, 200+40
Here is how we run our events...and we announce everything, our players from the forum will attest to that...
1) We hold 5% of the prize pool to tip the dealers, this way the players don't have to, if they wish to after, that is great. This is above and beyond the 20%, because it is up to the players to tip, but some don't, so to avoid that we tip them right off the bat.
2) Once the rebuy period is over, we announce the prize pool, along with that announcement, we will say "we needed $xxx to cover costs, we took it out of the
x-amount of rebuy's", what ever is left, goes to the prize pool. If we hit our mark, than hey, we don't need to dip, so it is all in the prize pool.
3) Our cash game, it saved our ass's in the Freeze-out tournament, at first deal, we were already down $650+, it made enough to cover all expenses and pay for the 3 seats that were given away (a total of $360). But eventually (like the June tourney), this is what we want from our cash games, we want our cash game to run well enough that, we can stop charging 20% and only charge 5%. The left over revenue from the cash game, we want to use to by seats at poker forum TD's events to give out as prizes in our events, add to the prize pool and by trophy's for past and future winners.
We will always have a live game, and we have had ample discussion on the forum of what to rake, so, we rake 5% up-to a max of $3, if the pot is less than $30 (which it never was), the hand was not raked. The players at our live games are pretty hard core, one of our regulars dropped $780 in 5 hrs, and that's after playing in the $200 tournament.
Some TD's don't like to announce what is expense vs. revenue, we really don't care, and if we are going to take a couple of dollars for ourselves we DO and WILL announce it.
Now I'm going to open up a can of worms, LMAO(just joking)
What do you guy's think about what I just said and how we run our events?
I am interested in your input, because as a TD, the more input/criticism/advice/compliments that I receive really does help us develop our tournaments to make them comfortable, fun and exciting to the majority. And I want players to be itchin and craving for our next event(s).
Objection!
ScottyZ
But over and above the rebuy /addon scam issue...
What is the point to No limit - if you can rebuy?
Then you are just limited to the amount of money you have in your pocket.
Is it real nl poker tournament when you can go all in without the risk of being knocked out? It might as well be a limit game.
In a rebuy tournament, the period in which you can get rebuys ends after a pre-specified length of time (or blind levels). There's nothing special about the underlying tournament format. You can play any tournament format you want (for example, no-limit Texas holdem) either with or without rebuys.
Ummm... you can get knocked out of a limit tournament too.
I think you might have meant to say something like, "With a never-ending rebuy period, it might as well be a cash game." In that case, it would be a fair analogy.
Apart from this, there is a risk of being knocked out of a rebuy tournament during the rebuy period. You risk having to pay money in order to get a rebuy.
ScottyZ
And yes i know you can be knocked out - but i was referring to only being limited by the amount of money in your pocket.
That, my Friends is Barry interesting, BOO-YA.
I play a few small pots. How many is a few? It depends on my cards. And I usually only play 1 or 2 very bigs hands. I mostly try to watch what kind of cards people will call with, while I'm waiting for good cards with position. My goal is to maximize my stack at their expense. If you've been passive during the rebuy, also consider kicking it up a notch immediately after it's over. Most will be more passive then. Your reads on them in the first hour should help too. It's not a catch all stragety but it works well most of the time.
I guess my perspective on this is the rake is to cover expenses. Since the re-buys and add-ons are variable, taking a pre-announced percentage wouldn't be the best way to cover expenses. I would see this mainly as a cash grab.
I think the 60% figure I quoted *is* relevant from this perspective. This was a total rip off but I'm older and wiser now....
RQ, I don't like the idea of taking money out of the pool for tips. That should be left to the players to decide. The dealers are already paid a fair wage. If someone feels compelled to share the wealth, let them. If someone feels the dealers did a terrible job, you've taken the vote out of their hands. But I do appreciate the fact that you are upfront with your players. This is a very good approach and much less likely to give rise to complaints that you are gouging. The only thing you will get is 'you should have done it cheaper' by the guys who think they know better. They don't have to play in your tourney. They can run their own and put you out of business if they'd like to try.
That is a good point, but I have had and been to quite a few tourney's were 2nd and 3rd place won't tip because they "didn't finish with enough money", and 1st feels compelled to pick up the slack. So, this way they don't have a choice, and first place isn't stuck feeling the heat.
And yes, you are right, if people don't like what we are doing, then by all means, play somewhere else or organize another game. I don't want to piss anybody off, but at the same time as a TD, I have to do what I have to do to make sure everything runs smooth and everyone gets paid. And we have been and always will do what we have to , to make it as cheap as possible to play.
As for dealers making a fair wage, yes and no. My dealers make $100 a game with me. They arrive from where ever at 12:30 in the afternoon and are there until 10:30-11:00. I'm sure anyone can do the math. Therefore, I will take the tip out of the prize pool, and yes if players don't like that they don't have to play at my tourney's.
Before I posted this, I re-read it, I just want you know that I don't mean to sound aggressive or standoffish, I am stating my point of view. I know that everyone has their own opinion on how things should run, so I don't argue or get upset. I just say, "Hey, this is how we do it".
It would be nice, if one day all the "legit" underground TD's could get together and set a format on how things should run, but I guess that is a lot of work that people just don't have time for. So for now, I will do my best to please the masses on both sides of the table.