Why I love Rebuy MTTs

I said a couple posts back that I like Rebuy MTTs because the rake is lower and it is a deeper stacks tournament than normal as well. Kind of the best of both worlds for me. I wanted to put some numbers behind what I was talking about for those out there who do not see the inherent advantage a rebuy tournament has to offer. So I will use the MATH rebuy as an example.

54 Entires ($10+1)
130 Rebuys ($10)
43 Add-ons ($10)

Total Prize Pool = $2270
Total Rake = $54
Rake = 2.3%

Normal MATH Rake 7.7%
$10+1 Rake 9.1%

So you have 1/4th the rake of a normal $10+1 MTT, and even the reduced rake ($24+2) of the MATH is still almost 3.5 times higher.

Now for the starting stack sizes. This is a bit confusing for rebuys, but lets look at it this way for now and I will explain why this is valid later. Lets just take all the chips in play and divide by the number of entries and call that the "rebuy equivalent starting stack". For the rebuy math you have T1000 x 184 and T1500 x 43 chips in play and 54 entries.

Rebuy Equivalent Starting Stack = T4602

This is 1.5x the normal MATH starting stack. Now I understand that you don't get these chips all up front, and you are only entitled to buy your way up to T3500 total. I don't think either of those two distinctions are very important. First of all, in a rebuy you can make it to the end of the 1st hour every time if you want. It is in your control. You can get to the point where you can take the add-on. The fact that you were a bit short early on in the first hour really does not matter much. You are not going to be eliminated for lack of a stack, and you are not constrained in anyway for lack of a stack in the first hour of a rebuy.

What about the T4602 chips though? How can I say this is really representative of the starting stacks when some will take 12 rebuys and others none? Well here's the thing. The people who are taking multiple rubuys are not doing so to build their own stack. Each time they do this it is because they have contributed their stack to the MTT field in general. The extra 2k in chips they get by double rebuying is the amount of chips collectively everyone else now has in their stacks. Multiple rebuys build the stacks of the collective entries not the multiple rebuyers. So if you play an average game, have average cards/luck in the first hour, and take the double buy-in plus add on, you will have on average T4602 at the end of the rebuy period (slightly higher actually due to the few eliminations). Better or luckier players will have more. Worse or unluckier players will have less. This is no different than a normal 3k double stacks tournament at the end of the first hour where you will have a spread of stack sizes, except there are really 1.5x as many chips to share. So rebuys are even deeper than deepstacks MTTs and have 1/4th the rake. Pretty nice combination IMO.