First of all, you should opt to rebuy right away when you are seated, before the first hand has been dealt, no matter which style you choose to play. If you are one of the better poker players in the satellite, you want to have the most ammunition available to you. Since you get into more profitable situations and make fewer mistakes than the average satellite player, you are more likely to double your chips than you are to lose them all. Rebuying right away allows you to acquire chips at twice the rate of someone who decided not to. If you double up twice during the first orbit, wouldn’t you like your stack to be 12,000 chips instead of 6,000?

Now that you’ve made your initial rebuy, you have to decide what your strengths as a poker player are. Do you wield a big stack effectively or are you more of a short-stack artist? Do you play small pairs and suited connectors well or are you more comfortable playing tight? Do you play well after the flop?

Those who play a big stack effectively, like to enter pots with speculative hands and who play well after the flop should probably play a loose style. This assumes you have enough money in your account that rebuying multiple times won’t put a dent in your bankroll. Those who get good value out of short-stack situations, like playing tight and who consider pre-flop play the strongest part of their game should just play their normal tournament strategy. Forget you can rebuy when playing hands. Only remain aware enough so you realize it might affect your opponents’ strategies.

If you are watching television, surfing the internet or playing multiple poker games at once during the satellite, a conservative strategy works best. Also, if you have been taking a ton of bad beats or are in an otherwise fragile emotional state, play the conservative strategy. You shouldn’t be playing poker without a level head, so minimize your investment (or better yet, don’t register for the tournament at all. Save your money for tomorrow, when you feel better and have a better chance of winning).

Conservative strategy:
Many players play very loose during the rebuy period. The conservative style exploits this. You pick up chips by waiting for good hands and squeezing the maximum value out of them. You play just enough extra hands to make sure players don’t label you as a rock. Since most players won’t be paying close attention to you anyway, it doesn’t take too much effort to do this. Just raise with a hand like 9Ts or 88 every 20 minutes or so. Basically, you’re playing your normal tournament strategy while the players around you are playing much looser. Basic logic dictates that if your opponents are all playing loose and you are playing tight, you will have the advantage.

If you are playing this strategy, make large value bets before the flop. Most players who limp will call a disproportionately large bet before the flop. Plus, you’d like to narrow the field down to a couple of opponents if you have a big pair. If three players limp in for 20 chips during the first level of a rebuy satellite and you have KK in late position, raise to something like 180 or 200, if not more.

Your raise accomplishes two things: It gets some players to fold weak aces and it makes the pot larger for those players who do call. The larger pot gives them more incentive to call your big bets later on in the hand. If you raise to 200 in the above scenario and get a guy with QJ to call (believe me, you will be called by much worse here), there’s no way he’s getting away from a flop of Q-x-x. You can bet 400 on the flop and feel secure that he will call if he has caught any piece of the flop. These players want to play a lot of hands and want to put chips in the pot. I’ve never heard a story about anyone making a big laydown during the rebuy period.

Nor should you make any big laydowns during the rebuy period. Just because you’re playing the conservative strategy doesn’t mean you will be playing weak-tight. Your opponents will be raising with all sorts of hands with confidence because they know they can rebuy right away if they lose. Be prepared to value AQ like it’s AK, JJ like it’s QQ, etc. Make your bets, calls and raises accordingly. In most tournaments, it would be terrible to get all-in with AQ when everyone has a deep stack. In a rebuy tournament, it’s pretty standard. There will be situations where you’ll swear your opponent has AK and he’ll turn over AT.

If at some point your stack dips below the original buy-in you should rebuy. If you lose all of your chips in one hand you should rebuy twice if it’s still early in the rebuy period. If it’s late in the rebuy period, I would just quit the satellite and sign up for the next one. You don’t want to spot the field extra chips when there’s a new rebuy satellite every hour.

You will usually accumulate fewer chips playing this strategy than you would playing a gamble it up strategy, but it’s a lot less expensive.

Gamble it up strategy:
Let’s start by talking about what playing a gamble it up strategy does not mean. It does not mean that you will be playing every hand. It does not mean you will be pushing all-in with a 27-offsuit and it does not mean you will be calling all-in in situations where you are obviously in bad shape. What it does mean is that you will be playing any reasonable hand, including stuff like 56-offsuit and K6-suited. It means you will be raising with your playable hands at least 70 percent of the time and your raise will often be an overbet. You will also be re-raising raisers with any decent hand and calling all in with hands like QT-suited.

Your goal playing this strategy is to win a boat load of chips. When you have a stack below the amount you can rebuy twice for, you play like you have nothing to lose. Go ahead and call all-in with a K9-suited even if you have no money invested in the pot. The chips you just lost are only two mouse clicks away.

You want to develop a reckless image and turn your opponents into looser players. You will get paid off a lot more on your big hands that way. You will inevitably double up using this strategy, though it will often be expensive. When you do double up, you still want to play loose, but not recklessly so. Your chip stack isn’t where you want it to be just yet, but you have a lot more to lose now.

Loosen up considerably when you have an opportunity to triple up. If someone raises all-in and another player calls, it’s reasonable to be the third all-in caller with a hand like QT-suited if your opponents have stacks as big as yours. A triple-up is gold. Make sure you are dominated before you pass them up. Even if you have QcTc, one of your opponents has AsQd and the other has 8h8d, you still have a 27 percent chance to win the pot. If your opponent has AK instead of AQ, you have a 33 percent chance to win the pot.

Conclusion:
By the end of the rebuy period most players will be back to playing a normal strategy, although a few will be making their last attempts to double up. Once you get a stack you’re comfortable advancing to the next round with, you can revert to your normal tournament strategy.

Almost every tournament will offer an add-on at the end of the rebuy period, which is essentially a rebuy open to everyone, regardless of chip position. The add-on is usually a good value because you receive more chips than a regular rebuy. On Pokerstars, for example, a rebuy gets you 1,500 chips and an add-on gets you 2,000 chips. I would take the add-on most of the time. The only time I wouldn’t take it is if I had a very large stack.

It’s difficult to determine the point at which the add-on becomes a bad value. It’s certainly good for you if you have 1,000 chips, since it will triple your stack (assuming the Pokerstars model). But say you didn’t rebuy at all and have worked your stack up to 20,000. Would it be worth it to double your investment to increase your stack by 10 percent? Probably not.

The reason it’s difficult to find the point between these two examples at which purchasing the add-on stops being profitable is you don’t have to win all of the chips to win a seat in a super-satellite, so the math alone isn’t an adequate measure. The math measures the overall chip value you’re getting, not the value with respect to the payout. Think about how much you are paying and how much your chip stack is improving when considering taking the add-on. If you are somewhere in the grey area or close to it, you should err on the side of taking the add-on.