Or so it seems :)

I was surprised to read this article in Cardplayer on re-entry tournaments. It's well-written and presents multiple viewpoints on them, so the article itself is solid. Several of the players' views are misguided though.

First let's define terms.

Rebuy: Tournament where you can purchase another stack if you bust or your chips fall below a certain threshhold, usually the starting stack. You stay at your same seat and table.

Re-entry: Tournament where, if you bust, you can enter again - paying the rake a second time, getting a new table/seat draw, etc.

Most of the live tournies Katie and I played over the past couple of months were re-entries. A big theme among several of the players quoted in the Cardplayer article was that single-bullet players were at a disadvantage compared to those willing to shell out for multiple bullets, had lower equity, etc. This is false.

What's true is that single-bullet players have a lower chance of winning compared to a similarly-skilled player prepared to re-enter anytime he busts during the re-entry period. If you have a goal of maximizing your win probability rather than making the most money possible - because you're a rich amateur, have a prop bet, hunting for endorsements, etc. - then you can gain an advantage in re-entries.

As with conventional rebuys though, for most players the focus should remain on making solid investments with a good expectation. Any players willing to make a chip-losing play because it's a re-entry/rebuy is either misguided or has a different goal than maximizing return on investment. The initial rebuy in a standard rebuy, despite exchanging the same amount of money for less valuable chips, can be a good investment if (as in most fields) many players who have rebought are routinely putting their double-stacks at risk in "marginal" situations. Making such bad plays yourself in a rebuy or re-entry, however, while increasing your chance of winning if you're rebuying often to get a huge stack, will lower your return on investment - possibly to negative.

Personally, I like re-entries. Generally I'm not going to re-enter, as the blinds will tend to be higher at the point of re-entry so it's like paying the same rake as you did initially for a worse structure. But if it's a softer-than-normal field I can re-enter if I bust early, and as Kathy Liebert alludes to in the article, there are plenty of players who will splash around a lot more "because" they can re-enter.

As a final point, some claim that pros are more likely to re-enter than amateurs. While I can't say whether that's true, from the smallish sample I saw it wasn't. Continuing on the anecdotal front, I heard that the $100k WPT high roller became a re-entry at the last minute as the only two people interested in re-entering were rich businessmen.

In summary: (a) Know your goals for playing and be explicit if they're not to make the most money possible. (b) Focus on making the best possible investments. (c) It'd be awesome to casually re-enter a $100k buyin.









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