After you get through the wild and crazy period that is the rebuy levels, you come to the post rebuy period with a bunch of chips in play, relatively small blinds, and a bunch of players that just got done gambling their hearts out for the past hour and may not have settled down from shoving in buy-in after buy-in –  a situations that’s even more common at smaller sites like Bodog Poker.  If you don’t believe me, grab a Bodog referral number, sign up and you’ll see soon enough.

So, what’s the best way to approach the post rebuy period when you aren’t one of those wild and unprofitable players that populate the scene?
   

Basically, the post rebuy period is a deep stacked tournament with a bunch of players that will be unnaturally tight for about a round, then back to completely wild and unpredictable, on average. The reality of being unable to rebuy sets in and keeps people from being too wild, unless they’re starting the level short as is; if they’re under 30 big blinds, don’t be shocked to see them shipping it in incredibly light early (double or give up syndrome) and otherwise, everyone will be playing cautiously and carefully at first, even with the impressively large stacks. This is a good time, if you have a massive stack, to up your aggression against medium stacks, who don’t have a comfortable stack to play with and will be very cognizant of no longer having the safety net of a rebuy to keep them from losing all the buy-ins the’ve sunk into this tournament.
   

So, what’s the best course of action if you’re one of those medium stacks? Realize that a medium stack in a rebuy tournament is not as short as it may appear; don’t look at your relative average stack, look at what your M tells you about your position in the tournament. If you’re half of the tournament average in chips, but still sitting on an M of 14, you’re actually sitting on a comfortable stack and don’t have the urgency that your half average stack may imply. The stacks also tend to get short much slower in rebuy tournaments, just because there are more chips to pass around; bigger pots will happen more often with the big stacks, so expect the average stack to be about 100% larger than they would be in a normal tournament with similar blinds. This means that, in order to properly play these tournament in the middle stages, you need to have a good idea of playing deep stacked poker; making decisions for 100+ big blinds will be a lot more common in these tournaments than your normally structured ones, where after four levels, the average stack barely has 40-50 blinds left in it.

Be aware of the changes that come with playing the post rebuy period; it doesn’t just play out like a normal tournament, even with the inflated stacks. Be aware of the players that are newly fearful of busting out, and how to approach playing the deep stacked tournaments that the rebuy tournaments turn into, and you’ll find success in the post rebuy period.