How to Spend Your Bodog MTT Credits

If you are like me, and have been playing in the Bodonkey whenever possible, you probably have more Bodog MTT credits than you know what to do with. One thing that's nice about Bodog script is it is actually worth more than face value if you know what you are doing. Not true at PokerStars where you can get .90-.95 cents on the dollar tops on the open market for PokerStarts T$. At Bodog they are worth close to 2x face value. Ok, I must be nuts, but their are a couple simple facts. They players at Bodog are pretty bad compared to the other sites, and MTT overlays are in quite an abundance at Bodog. The obvious place to go is to take your T109 straight over to the Sunday 100k guarantee, where you will start with mega-deep stacks, and be looking at around a 20% overlay. If you can't do the Sunday thing, let me tell you below about how Rebuy MTTs work on Bodog. They have a small change, which makes for a pretty huge difference.

I was planning on doing a post about the math involved in determining if you should take the add-on at the end of the rebuy period. It is fairly interesting stuff, but in most cases you will not have enough chips at the end to decline the add-on, so it would not be a huge help to understand the math as you can almost auto add-on. I will not go to the depths I was planning on but will summarize the concept here real quick before talking about the Bodog rebuy MTTs.

When you take an add-on in a rebuy MTT, the cost of the add-on must exceed your Expectation Value increase from the additional chips, or it is a bad idea. If the cost is $10 for the add-on, and your expectation value for the MTT goes up $8 then, you should not take the add-on. Now quickly look at the cost of chips. For FullTilt you get T1000 for rebuys and T1500 for add-ons. So if you double buy at the start (T2000), and build your stack to T3000 during the rebuy period, you can see that the cost of the chips is the same for the rebuys/add-ons. The going rate in both cases was $10 for T1500. So I will just state that if it costs less to add-on chips, than the cost it was to obtain them up to that point, you automatically Add-On. So if you have sunk a bunch of money in rebuys, but have not accumulated chips, you take the add-on automatically. If you are low in chips for any reason (T3000 or less in the example) you take the add-on. So when do you not take it? When you have accumulated a ton of chips without a bunch of rebuys. In that case the chips you have obtained have a value, much less than the Add-On chips. I think you could use trial and error and one of the MTT expectation value calculators to get to a real number, but I will not bother. Lets just use an example. A player double buys immediately and gets to T10,000 at the break without additional rebuys. His rate for the chips was $10/T5000 and is offered $10/T1500. He can increase his chip stack by 15% by paying 50% more in entry fees. I think this player should pass. My guess is you want at least 25-30% more chips from the add-on, or you should pass. 15% more chips just does not improve your chances enough to be worth the additional expense. Save your money.

Ok, so now back to Bodog. What Bodog does different is they give T1000 for buy-ins and rebuys, but the Add-on is T2000. That's a pretty huge difference. The add-on chips are 1/2 the price of the initial chips. I have always played rebuys by double buying immediately and playing tight looking to get to 4x or better in the first hour. In the case of Bodog, I think you can't take the double buy at the beginning, as the chips are relatively too expensive. I think, you single buy, and play tight until the break. If you bust, you single buy back in. Then take the T2000 add-on always. They run a $10,000 guarantee with a $33 buy-in (30 Rebuys and Add-ons). Typically you are looking at 100 to start, 80 at the break and a decent overlay. It is tough to tell because the Bodog software does not tally rebuys and add-ons. So if you can avoid rebuying, you are in for $63 at the break with on average T3600 in chips (T3000 + 20% of the dead chips). With 10k being paid. That's $125 for each of the 80 players left. You may be a bit below average, but there is still a ton of play left with the bodog blind structure. Seems like a pretty easy way to get $2 cash for every $1 in Tournament dollars, but that's just me. The interesting thing, is how making this small tweak to the add-on, completely changes the correct rebuy strategy. The donks playing at Bodog will never figure this one out.