Rebuy tournaments: take the add-on, skip the coinflips.
Everyone at the table will tell you the first hour is free, so get your chips in. They have it backwards. Busting still costs you something, and the real money in these events is sitting in a purchase most of the field barely thinks about.
How a rebuy event actually works.
Four moving parts, and only the last one is unusual: in a rebuy tournament the prize pool and the chips in play are built at the same time, out of the same transactions. That is what makes everything after this section calculable.
The rebuy period
A fixed window at the start of the tournament — usually the first hour or two — during which busting is not the end of anything. Pay again, receive another starting stack, sit back down. Nothing else about the format matters until it closes.
When you may rebuy
Almost always on elimination, and in most events also whenever you are at or below the starting stack of 5,000 chips. Some let you take two at once before the first hand, which is the same price for double the chips.
The add-on
A single optional purchase offered to everyone still seated when the rebuys close. It costs the same as a rebuy and typically hands out 10,000 chips instead of 5,000. That ratio is the most important number in the format.
The pool is built as you go
Nothing is fixed at registration. Every rebuy and every add-on adds to the prize money and to the chips in play at the same time, which is what makes the exchange rate below calculable at all: 330 transactions here, $3,300 in the pool, 2,050,000 chips on the tables.
Two fifths of the chips were bought at half price
A modelled 100-entry event at $10 a shot, with 150 rebuys and 80 add-ons taken. Bars are chips contributed; the figure beneath each is what those chips cost per chip.
39% of every chip on the tables arrived through the add-on, at half the price the same chips cost at the registration desk. All of them settle at the same value at the end. That single asymmetry decides more about a rebuy tournament than anything you do with a hand of cards, and it is the reason the next section exists.
Only one of these is a profit.
Every chip in the tournament settles at the same rate — the prize pool divided by the chips in play. But they are not all sold at that rate, and the gap between what a chip costs and what it settles at is the entire economics of the format.
In the modelled event, $3,300 of prize money is spread across 2,050,000 chips, so a chip settles at $0.00161. Here is what each way of acquiring one actually costs.
Three of those rows lose money and they all lose the same 20%. That is not a fee and it is not the operator taking a cut — it is a straight transfer inside the field. Buy-in and rebuy chips are sold above what they settle at precisely because add-on chips are sold below it, and the money moves from the players who declined the add-on to the players who took it. Across the whole field it nets to zero — the 100 buy-ins and 150 rebuys give up exactly what the 80 add-ons take. (The four rows above are per-transaction prices, not a sum: add them and you get −$1.70, because a double rebuy is simply two rebuys counted again.)
So the add-on is not a nice extra. It is the product. $10.00 buys $16.10, a return of 61% before a card is dealt, available to every player still seated and requiring no skill whatsoever. It is offered once, it does not care how many chips you already have, and there is no stack size at which declining it is correct. Everything else on this page is a refinement; this is the page.
Chips are treated here as converting linearly into prize money. They do not — ICM makes each additional chip worth slightly less than the last, so the real figures in the last two columns are a little flatter than shown. What does not move is the ordering or the sign: add-on chips cost half what buy-in chips cost, and no model of chip value changes which side of zero that lands on. The field itself (entries, rebuys, take-up) is modelled and stated; plug your own event’s numbers into the same three sums and the shape comes out the same.
Cheap is not the same as free.
The case for gambling in a rebuy period is that busting barely costs anything. That is true. The conclusion drawn from it is still wrong, and you can see why in three numbers.
That is where the folklore is right. Being eliminated during the rebuy period costs about the same as a misclick. Every instinct built in a freezeout — protect your stack, survive, avoid confrontations you do not need — is switched off for an hour, and it genuinely should be. Nothing in the rest of this section takes that back.
Here is where it goes wrong. You do not pay $1.95 for gambling. You pay it for losing, which happens about half the time, while the chips you win are worth exactly what everybody else’s chips are worth. Put a starting stack in on a coinflip and you have bought a $0.98 loss — small, invisible, and repeated all night.
Which gives the number this section exists for. Getting a starting stack all-in during the rebuy period breaks even at 55.4% equity, not 50%. The rebuy period is the one phase of a tournament that should make you tighter than a freezeout, and the whole table believes the reverse. That is not a small edge to hold over eight players for an hour.
And then it ends. The moment the rebuys close, the price of an elimination goes from $1.95 to about $38.82 — the value of an average stack, which after the add-on is roughly 24,118 chips, or 60 big blinds. That is a 20-fold jump, announced by nothing but a break, and a good portion of the table will play the next orbit as though it never happened.
One honest qualification: this prices chips linearly and prices only the money. A larger stack also buys leverage over a deep field, and a player with a real edge over the room is worth more per chip than the average — both push the 55.4% back down a little. Neither pushes it under 50%, which is the only claim being made here.
Four things the numbers tell you to do.
None of these require a read, a range chart or a good run of cards. Three of them happen away from the table entirely, and the first one is worth more than the other three put together.
Take the add-on. Almost always take the add-on
It is the only chips in the building sold below what they settle at: $10.00 buys $16.10 of equity, a return of 61% on the spot. There is no stack size at which this stops being true, because the price does not depend on your stack. The only players who should decline are ones who cannot afford the outlay at all.
If you remember one thing from this page, make it the add-on.
Do not gamble because the rebuys are open
Busting costs $1.95, so the downside is small — but a gamble only triggers it half the time, and the chips you win are worth their ordinary value. Run the arithmetic and an all-in needs 55.4% to break even inside the rebuy period. That is tighter than a freezeout, not looser.
The rebuy period does not make coinflips free. It makes them cost half a rebuy.
Let the table gamble instead
Everyone else at the table has heard the same folklore and is acting on it. Their ranges are wider than any price justifies, which means the value hands you would normally have to disguise can simply be bet. You are not looking for flips here — you are looking for the people taking them.
You do not need to gamble in a rebuy period. You need to be the one getting called.
Know when the gear change lands
The moment the rebuys close, the price of elimination goes from $1.95 to $38.82. Nothing announces it and most of the table does not adjust for another orbit. That orbit is the single most profitable stretch of a rebuy tournament, and all it takes to collect is having stopped first.
Everyone changes gear eventually. Being twenty minutes early is the whole edge.
Same event, three different games.
A rebuy tournament changes character twice, both times without warning, and the price of every mistake changes with it. Here is how each stretch should be played.
The rebuy period · Elimination is cheap
The only stretch of any tournament where busting has a price tag instead of being final.
- Play a solid, value-heavy game — the table is supplying all the variance you need.
- Get it in as a favourite, not as a coinflip. The bar here is above 50%, not below.
- Take a double rebuy if it is offered and you are comfortable with the outlay; the chips are the same price, but the depth is worth having.
- Do not rebuy a stack you would not have bought fresh — it is the same purchase either way.
Reach the break with a stack you built rather than one you paid for. Busting costs $1.95, which is cheap enough to ignore and not cheap enough to chase.
The add-on break · One decision
Thirty seconds of admin that is worth more than the previous hour of poker.
- Take it. The price per chip is half what everyone paid at the desk.
- Take it on a big stack — the discount does not care how many chips you already hold.
- Take it on a short stack — it is the cheapest route back to a playable stack you will get.
- Work out your total outlay now, while it is a decision rather than a habit.
A $10.00 purchase worth $16.10. Every player who declines is handing that difference to the ones who did not.
After the rebuys · A real tournament
Deep stacks, a full field and, suddenly, no safety net at all.
- Tighten immediately — before the rest of the table works out that it should.
- Expect an unusually deep field; the add-on has just handed everyone a stack.
- Target the players still in rebuy mode. They will be the ones getting it in light.
- Treat the first orbit after the break as the softest spot in the tournament.
The average stack here is about 60 big blinds, so this is a deep-stack game, not a shoving contest. Elimination now costs $38.82.
The lobby price is not the price.
A rebuy tournament is the only format where the number next to the name is a deposit rather than a cost. Here is what the same event actually charges, depending on how you play it.
Same modelled event: $10 to enter, rebuys at the same price, one add-on. The green bar is the advertised entry; the gold is everything the lobby did not mention.
And what each of those settles at
Same four patterns, run through the exchange rate from section two. Bars are the chips that spending buys; the figure beside each is what those chips settle at against what they cost. The third row has to come out at zero — it is the field average by construction, which is a useful check that none of this is sleight of hand.
The average entrant spends 3.3 times the advertised price — that is not an estimate, it is the prize pool divided by the number of players, and it has to be true. Anyone rebuying to the cap spends 5 times it. So a bankroll rule of a hundred buy-ins means a hundred lots of $33, not a hundred lots of $10. Sizing off the lobby number is how players end up declining the best-priced chips in the tournament because they have run out of money at the break.
Decide the figure before you sit down, not at the moment you bust. The cheapest way to play these is buy-in plus add-on with rebuys used only when you would genuinely have bought that stack fresh — and the second row of this chart is what that discipline costs. It is also the only pattern on this page that finishes ahead: the buy-in chips lose a little, the add-on chips win a lot more, and the two together come out clearly in front.
Four ways rebuy players hand it over.
The first is the most expensive decision in the format and it is made at a break. The other three all come from believing the rebuy period is something it is not.
Skipping the add-on
The most expensive fold in the format, and it is made at a break rather than at a table. The chips are half price and they settle at the same value as everybody else's. Declining does not save you money — it transfers the difference to every player who accepted.
Gambling because it feels free
Busting costs $1.95 and a gamble collects that only half the time, so a coinflip inside the rebuy period is a $0.98 mistake rather than a neutral one. Small, repeated fifty times across a session, and entirely avoidable.
Budgeting for the advertised price
The number in the lobby is the cost of sitting down, not the cost of playing. Turn up with one buy-in and you will either decline the add-on or rebuy nothing, and both of those are decisions being made by your wallet rather than by you.
Not changing gear at the break
The rebuy period and the tournament that follows it are different games with different prices for the same mistake. Players who carry the first one into the second are the reason the orbit after the break is worth showing up for.
The rebuy cheat sheet.
Everything above, compressed to what to do and what to stop doing the next time the lobby offers you an hour of unlimited rebuys.
- Take the add-on, at any stack size.
- Get it in as a favourite, not on a flip, while the rebuys are open.
- Budget the full likely outlay before you register.
- Tighten the moment the rebuy period closes.
- Don't treat the rebuy period as free — it costs a fraction of a rebuy every time you flip.
- Don't rebuy a stack you would not buy fresh at that moment.
- Don't decline the add-on to protect a big stack.
- Don't keep playing rebuy poker once the safety net is gone.
Take the add-on, and stop gambling.
The add-on is the whole edge.
$16.10 of chips for $10.00, available to everyone, offered once. Nothing else you do in a rebuy tournament has that return, and it takes no skill at all — only the decision to be there for it.
The rebuy period should tighten you.
Busting costs $1.95, not nothing, and a gamble pays that half the time — so an all-in needs 55.4% here rather than 50%. The table's belief that the opposite is true is what you are being paid for.
Price the event, not the entry.
The lobby says $10. The average entrant spends $33, and anyone rebuying to the cap spends $50. Build the bankroll around the real figure or the format will make your decisions for you.