Micro/small stake Tournies

particularly 3$ and 5$ rebuys...

What is the best way to play these things ?
I usually have an average chip stack throughout tourney and usually make double my buy in back. I never seem to have a big stack What should i be doing ? I only steal mainly to keep my stack at average level and wait for big hands to make a big gain ?

I am guessing by your question that you have a lot to learn about poker. This is not a jab or insult, but now that you found FTR, you may want to go to the MTT section and look over the stickies at the top. Then have a look at some of our videos and beginner stickies as well. There is a ton of info here, and now that you stumbled on it, spend some time reading. You will never find a wealth of information that you never knew again ever, since once you learn everything here, you will dig and dig for that next little bit.

I am not positive but I think you need a pretty big roll to take shots at 3/5 re buys. Pretty sure the general strategy is to take shots and try to build big at the start, so you may be rebuying a lot, and have to invest a lot.

Just moneying in MTTs is not the goal, you should not be trying to maintain, you should push to win them, that is how you make money.

i thought you had this game figured out already? just push allin every hand

Originally Posted by Trainer_jyms

I am guessing by your question that you have a lot to learn about poker. This is not a jab or insult, but now that you found FTR, you may want to go to the MTT section and look over the stickies at the top. Then have a look at some of our videos and beginner stickies as well. There is a ton of info here, and now that you stumbled on it, spend some time reading. You will never find a wealth of information that you never knew again ever, since once you learn everything here, you will dig and dig for that next little bit.

i read HOH, you just play according to the blind levels low mid or high...

Maybe it would be better to just focus on the micro SnGs for now? Chances of learning and winning* would be a lot better

I'm a huge rebuy donk and I regularly spend $50+ when I play the $3R. So I'm not allowed to play it without a $6k BR :P For normal people who don't play like idiots, I would probably feel comfortable playing the $3R with $2500. The problem with these tournaments is that there is amazing variance and you can lose a lot of money before making any significant cashes. I don't think I would ever play the $10R on a regular basis unless I had at least $10k in my BR (actually with the way I play, maybe I would wait until I had $20k, lol).

All this is assuming you're playing on Poker Stars, though. If you're playing somewhere smaller like ipoker (they have this really retarded turbo rebuy tournament that's really funny and really soft), you can have a smaller BR because the field is so much smaller and the variance is much smaller too.

lol I played a rebuy on Full Tilt yesterday that had 41 people and totaled around 25 rebuys. It was pretty lame, especially since I was playing like a maniac the first half hour before I noticed nobody else was.

Originally Posted by Jesus Smurf

particularly 3$ and 5$ rebuys...

What is the best way to play these things ?
I usually have an average chip stack throughout tourney and usually make double my buy in back. I never seem to have a big stack What should i be doing ? I only steal mainly to keep my stack at average level and wait for big hands to make a big gain ?

Try to get a big stack during rebuy hour, but it's not the end of the world if you don't. Doing so will buy you more time after rebuy hour is over, obviously.

You'll see a lot of people punting off tons of chips after the first hour because they feel like they have huge stacks. Until you're in danger from the blinds, I would just sit back a bit and capitalize on other people's mistakes when you have big hands. Whether or not you're going to steal much is dependent on your table. If it's really loose and crazy, I wouldn't really try it much early in the tournament. Steals and resteals are REALLY important later in the tournament, though, especially on money bubbles. You need to learn the best times to steal to chip up, and you need to know when you can resteal effectively. Putting pressure on people who don't want to bust is a great way to get lots of chips, and you need to do this because you aren't always going to have great hands to double up with.

Definitely don't be one of those people who are really scared to bust and will hang around and wait until they get AA while their stack drops to 3bb. If you find your stack dropping and you get down to 5bb, you should be pushing any two cards UTG.

I did much better in these things after I learned to play some cash. If you're going to be playing deep stacked poker, you're going to have to know how to play post flop. To be honest, most of the players in these tournaments have no idea what they're doing post flop and are incredibly spewy. It's all about realizing when someone's line just doesn't make sense, or recognizing when someone doesn't like their hand and can be pushed off with a bet.

I probably didn't help you at all, lol. I don't think anyone can really say "this is how you win this tournament", though. Like the posts above me suggested, do some reading, learn how to play poker, and then keep playing.

Courtie, are you seriously saying you manage to lose 15+ buyins in one hour? How??

I organise a private tourney every couple of week for 6-10 friends, and the last time, we decided to have a rebuy. Stars charge a minimum of $1 rake for a rebuy, so we upped the buyin from $5.50 to $8. Eight people played; there were TWO rebuys, one on the last hand of the hour. Fwiw, the top two spots were taken by the two players who rebought

My record was 23 buyins. I like big stacks. I play bad.