When to Add On in a Rebuy Poker Game

Rebuy tournaments are tricky animals. One of the benefits of tournament poker is these games feel less like gambling when you pay one buy-in and that's all the money you are risking. 

When you add the rebuy to the equation, which allows you to buy back in multiple times if you bust out early in the event, more gamble is added to the game. To confuse things further, some rebuys allow add-ons. Let's take a look at this element of tournament poker and see how best to use it.

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Poker tournaments typically allow a rebuy period in the first hour, allowing you to get another rack of chips for the rebuy price if you bust out. In addition there is the add-on, which is once again a rack of chips for the buy in price. The add-on, however, is reserved for those players who didn't have to rebuy during the event.

The question then becomes if you do well enough by the end of the rebuy period, should you use the add-on?

Anytime you can add more chips to your chip stack is looked at as a good thing, however each time you had chips from a rebuy or an add-on you are also adding to your initial risk. You're putting in more money than you necessarily have to in order to win. If you have busted out a rebuy gives you a chance to get back into the game and win, but what about the add-on?

In the end you have to decide on spending extra money to add to your chip stack, and the best way to make this decision is to take an estimate of what the average chip stack is in the game at the end of the rebuy. If you are in the top 20% of the players in terms of chips that then you probably don't need to spend the extra money on the add-on. If you find yourself in the bottom 80%, however, the add-on is probably a good idea.

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