Clearly one of the most popular online poker formats, the Rebuy/Add-on (R&A) tournament style is offered on virtually every major poker site. The reason for this mass popularity is easy enough: huge payout potential versus a small initial buy-in. It is the only way to potentially win thousands on a low-level buy-in without having to wade through the entire population of California. For your tournament dollar, there is no greater potential rate of return, but it isn’t quite that black and white. There are several key aspects to this format that you should bear in mind when deciding how to play it. Doing the math on an R&A tournament is most important if you want to rate any chance of success.
Probably every online cash poker player has seen the tournaments advertised as “$10 buy, $10k Guaranteed” or something similar, where the guaranteed money is a very attractive number compared with the buy-in. This is an R&A tournament, where the buy-ins are pooled with the collected number of rebuys and add-ons to form the total prize pool. And while this may seem like a great deal for the players, it is worth noting that I have never seen a major site fall way short of the guaranteed prize pool and have to subsidize it with their own money. Occasionally, they might fall just short, but never more than a few percentage points, and often times the prize pool far exceeds the guaranteed money due to overzealous players buying in repeatedly.
First, I should explain how the rebuy/add-on system works, and then you’ll see more clearly where the caution points are. In the R&A format, your initial buy-in will get you the standard number of starting chips that all ...