There is a rather short cameo appearance from me in one of the most recent PKR TV uploads:
http://www.pkr.com/en/community/news-events/pkr-tv-28-01/
I was sceptical when they first mentioned they were going to show the final table of a Gold Rush tournament as I didn't think it would make for particularly great viewing. They just about get away it as there is the intrigue of whether or not flo1223 can manage ridiculous back to back wins in it. The following are some of my thoughts on this tournament structure and on rebuys in general.
First off the chances of winning this $2 rebuy on just $2 are virtually non-existant. A single buy in doesn't even cover the big blind by the end of the rebuy hour and the add-on is so big you would be a fool not to take it. The turbo nature of this tournament makes it massively swingy and often sends you on devastating runs of rebuying. This is especially true when in this particular tournament you get 1,000 chips per buy in and can rebuy up to a cap of 9,000 chips. As a general rule of thumb I wouldn't enter any rebuy tournament I wasn't able to cover at least 20 rebuys for. Clearly in an a normal structured rebuy 20 buy ins would constitute a particularly bad day at the office, 5 to 10 rebuys would be much more standard. In the Gold Rush I have certainly gone over 20 rebuys on a number of occasions though.
The biggest error any player can make in a rebuy is to buy into one then quit it before the end of the rebuy period. Once you have put money into a rebuy tourney you are committing equity suicide by doing this. You might be on a hideous run but putting in 10 rebuys and quitting is doing you way more damage than hanging on into the end of the rebuy period and doing another 5 rebuys. Staying in is the only way you stand a chance of seeing a return on your investment.
The turbo nature of the Gold Rush means you can pretty much forget about seeing flops after the first hour unless you find yourself on a super bad limpy table. Most of the time even a slightly above average stack will leave you in shove/fold territory. Under these circumstances forget about speculative holdings unless you are short enough to open shove them. There are virtually no implied odds spots to set mine or speculate with connectors or gap connectors. Conversely big broadway hands like K J and A 10 go up in value massively as people are put in spots where they are forced into calling much lighter.
Getting an idea of the players at your table is essential. Late on in this tournament you can find that open shoving to steal the blinds/antes will add 10/15/20% to your stack without going to a showdown. The more passive the table you are at, the tighter the players are, the more you need to be using your stack like a cudgel and shipping it in to pick up the chips. I believe my record for open-shipping in the Gold Rush once in the money stands at 8 consecutive hands. Some of those I had something, some of them I had nothing. The circumstances and players present dictated that this was the best strategy so that is what I did. There were 5 other players at the table so over 8 hands 40 pairs of cards were folded to my naked aggression.
At the final table you need to be willing to be aggressive but you need to keep the ladder principle in the back of your mind and be aware of what the short stacks are doing. There is no point shipping junk if the short stack is going to end up getting doubled through.
The final thing to say about the Gold Rush is that the format is a lot of fun. It is fast paced and exciting. It is also very short. You can win over a $1,000 but you do not have to be up to 2am in the morning to get to it.
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