$10 Rebuy-Mania

Being that Saturday night was the last Saturday of the month, that meant Variety Night for our weekly home game. This month is was the $10 Rebuy-Mania. For $10, you start with 1000 chips. It's unlimited rebuys for the first four levels, starting at 5/10. You can rebuy at 500 chips or under. There's an additional AddOn of $10 for 1000 chips.

Traditionally, this has been the least popular of the variety tournaments. Last year, we set the record for a CPMG Rebuy tournament at 26 players. This year, attendance has been up due in part to the POY tournament race. So I expected that it was possible that we might get up to thirty players.

Well, that goal was broken before "Shuffle Up & Deal". We ended up selling out all four table that we had set up, and had alternates waiting to buy-in. Only one of the alternates got seated. The others decided to set up the 5th table, and starting the Cash game.

The official numbers were: 41 Players; 73 Rebuys; 33 AddOns. Those numbers might seem a little ridiculous on the surface. But the number that best tells the story is Average Stack at the Break, which was 3775 with 39 players remaining. That number is consistent with numbers from the previous three times that we have run this event (4000, 4055, and 3675)

The most Rebuys was 7+1 by Brian B. ProWest and Jeri had 5+1. Only two players were invested with their original $10, but neither of them made it to the Final Table. One of those $10 players had over 10k chips at the First Break. One other player had over 10k, but he went on to finish in 2nd place (El Diabl0).

As for my tournament, I didn't get to buy-in until close to the end of the first level due to the steady flow of players arriving. Fortunately, I did have an assistant TD (Data) who did great job of handling the Rebuys so I could play.

With there being four tables, some of them were on the calm side. Some of them had normal Rebuy action. And one of them was a Psycho table. That was the table that I ended up at. It had two of the three Rebuy leaders, along with many other who ended three or four rebuys. The one alternate ended up at our table well into the Rebuy period, and rebought three times. Because there was so much carnage at our table, it was not uncommon for there to be two or three Side Pots for some of the All-Ins. Fortunately, there was another experienced TD at the other end of the table (DougPoker), so we were able to keep things organized and moving as fast as multiple 3-way All-Ins can be.

At first, I was playing very tight for a two reasons. First was the ridiculous action. I don't just start shoving wildly for a Rebuy tournament. Second was because my cards were terrible. It took almost two levels to pick up a real hand (QQ), and get my stack in the middle. But I lost the 4-way All-In. So I rebought, and ended up rebuying a second time before I finally won a 3-way All-In with KK.

This got me up to almost 3000 chips, which slowed down some of the Crazies. They ended up folding to me once or twice because I had too many chips to gamble against. I was able to win one or two more pots, including the Final Hand of the Rebuy period with A9. After I bought the 1000 chip AddOn at the First Break, I had 7500 chips which was double the Average Stack.

After that, it was just a normal tournament, and the normal tournament things happened. I won pots; I lost pots; I got shortstacked; I doubled up. Things were cruising along until this hand in the 200/400 level.

It had folded around to the Button (Eskimo), who raised to 1200. I'm the SB, and I look down at 99. The Button had been doing a lot of raising lately, and winning pots uncontested. So this seemed like a good time to 3-bet to 4000. The BB folds. The Button thinks for a bit, and calls. I'm not happy about this. As the Button grabs the deck to deal the Flop, I push my stack of around 7500 All-In "In the Dark" because I'm probably not gonna like most Flops, and it will hopefully look like I have a Big Pair. The Flop is K T T. The Button is not happy with my shove. He thinks for a bit, and reluctantly calls. He shows AK. Great, he's been raising all these times, and now he wakes up with a real hand. I miss my two-outer, and I finish in 12th place.