Equity Rebuy

A new format for Texas holdem tournaments has been announced by the International Poker Players' Association, IPPA: Equity rebuy tournaments.

(For more on the IPPA, see the blog What is the IPPA?)

The $250K IPPA Championship announced for November 29, 2010, is a double shootout tournament. Forty-eight players will battle it out for the $12 million prize pool in two rounds of one-table tournaments.

To let players qualify a little cheaper to the $250K "Elite 48", a quantity of $1,000 satellites will be organized*. They will be using the new format of equity rebuy.

Equity rebuy - definition

In a normal rebuy tournament players are entitled to buy more chips one or several times during the first blinds periods of the tournament, often the first hour. The rebuy cost is typically identical to the original buy in, in this case $1,000.

However, in an equity rebuy shootout, there's room for one rebuy only. It's done after the first round of the event, that is, when each one-table tournament has a winner.

Now, the rebuy cost isn't equal to the original buy in. Instead, it's equal to the equity that each of the remaining players have in the tournament.

Since it's a shootout, all players have the same number of chips, and the same equity.

Example: $1,000 satellite

Let's say 1,000 players enter the $1,000 satellite. The winners of the first round all get their $1,000 back, so the remaining prize pool is $900,000. In these satellites there are ten players at each table, and the number of remaining players is 100.

Therefore, the equity for each remaining player is $9,000, and this is the cost of the rebuy.

Note that only players who have been eliminated can make a rebuy. The rebuy is a way of giving eliminated players a second chance without changing the equity for those who are still alive in the tournament.

What happens to the shootout format?

It all sounds reasonable. Our only question is, what happens with the shootout when eliminated players are allowed back into the match? If the 100 surviving players become 123, how do you set up a Round 2 that produces 10 final table players?

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* $1,000 satellites are underway right now in the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles.