Going into any rebuy tournament, you should know before the first cards are dealt how much money you’re willing to invest.
If you’re only planning on making one buy-in, then play a regular No-Limit Hold ’em tournament Playing a rebuy tournament with only one bullet, you have no safety net and you’re giving the other players a significant edge over you because they’re able to exploit your reluctance to gamble.
Maniacal approach can sometimes get you into the post-rebuy period with a large chip stack, which of course provides an edge for the rest of the tournament.
The problem is that if you’ve spent something like USD250in a USD10buy-in tournament, you have to finish that much higher in the money to come out ahead. A lot of times when you’re rebuying that many times, just making the money doesn’t cover how much you’ve invested into the tournament.
When you’re playing this middle-of-the-road strategy, it’s important to identify the maniacal players from the outset because they’re going to be very dangerous.
In the last 10 to 15 minutes of the rebuy period, if you’ve been able to acquire a stack, this is a critical time in the tournament to play smart.
If you have an edge in a given hand against these guys, use it, but you don’t want to gamble too much.