2) You get the chance to play with and learn from better players without risking huge sums.
3) You get a chance to take home a trophy that will sit on your shelf longer than the cash you win will remain in your wallet.
These reasons don't all always apply, though, as I found out today when I played in a tournament that employed a very different structure than I'm used to.
In today's tournament, the game was limit Texas Hold'em, and the buy-in was only $25. For that you got $200 in tournament chips, and there were unlimited $20 re-buys for the first hour. 100 players entered (fairly typical at this club), and the average number of rebuys per player is about two, so the players are usually looking at a prize pool of about $6,000, with about $2,000 of it going to the winner.
That all sounds very attractive for a $25 entry fee. A shot at two grand for twenty five bucks, and lots of experience to boot. Unfortunately, the experience you gain in such an event is not particularly useful except in other similarly structured rebuy tournaments. Let's see why.
My table was populated by a group of what are usually called "maniacs" in poker. This doesn't mean they are mentally unstable. It just means that they play very fast and very aggressively, in the hope of accumulating chips quickly. If they can't, they either bust out in five minutes, or they rebuy, perhaps as many as a half dozen times.
In a situation like this—a very low entry fee tournament with cheap rebuys—you can pretty much expect to see the maniac style of play as the rule rather than the exception. Players who usually play at the 2-4 or 3-6 game have a chance to see what it feels like to raise someone $100 (even if it's in tournament chips), and they get a little giddy.
The get so giddy, in fact, that just about every serious poker rule I've ever encountered was broken repeatedly in the first half-hour of play. Players were mis-calling their hands (e.g., announcing "full house" on the end when they had two pair or a straight or some other hand). Players who had already folded and who thus had no cards were announcing that they were raising. Players were folding out of turn, exposing cards that some players could see and some couldn't.
When I asked the dealer to try to get things under some semblance of control (several times the out-of-turn folds affected my action), he shrugged, smiled weakly, and said "it's pretty hard to stop'em." I'm not sure how he would have known this, because he never did try to "stop'em." Nor did any of the other three dealers who followed him. I never saw a single dealer attempt to "run the game" or do any of the things that more serious poker players expect dealers to do.
Although I was a bit ticked off at the time, I now realize it wasn't a big deal. The club where I was playing runs bigger events very professionally. They were catering to a different kind of crowd today. My "big tournament attitude" was what was out of line, not the club's management style.
I started feeling like I was watching a bunch of kids let loose in a place usually reserved for "grown-ups," and then I realized that age aside, this was exactly what was going on. Most of the players had arrived with the intent to risk some small amount and gamble wildly. If the cards hit their hands, they'd have a chance to make some money. If not, they'd had fun.
IF wild, bang-zoom, giggle-giggle poker is fun for you—and while it's not my cup of tea, I could see where it could be fun—then a low entry fee, unlimited rebuy tournament might be a worthy investment. But if you're looking at tournaments as a way of gaining experience against better players without risking your bankroll, or as a way of gaining experience for bigger tournaments, or as a way to take a shot at big money for a tiny investment, this format doesn't really work because:
1) Better players tend not to get involved at such low entry fee levels.
2) So many players use the "maniac" style (planning on rebuying) that you will find it very difficult to get very far without a rebuy or two, unless you get lucky in a hurry. Players double or triple raise before the flop with very speculative hands, knowing that they can rebuy if they don't score on the flop. Of course, anytime you're trying to turn a mere $25 into $2,000, you have to get very lucky. This just feels more like "coin flip lucky" to me than it feels like "poker lucky."
3) This wild style of play doesn't translate into good experience for (most) money games, because even at the very low limits like 2-4, the players (usually) aren't treating their chips like play money.
4) In bigger, non-rebuy tournaments, most players tend to play a style you might call "conservative-aggressive," pushing their strong hands and not investing lots of chips in speculative draws; six and seven-way action before the flop is very unusual. In inexpensive rebuy tournaments, "family pots" are very common. So you're not learning skills that will help you in the bigger events.
Once the re-buy period has passed (usually it's only the first hour), play settles down, because players realize they can no longer get more chips by pulling out another $20 and yelling "rebuy!" But if don't have a big stack of chips by the time the rebuy period is over, the blinds and betting limits are pretty large, compared to the number of chips in front of you. You'll quickly find yourself in a situation where you have one decent hand and have to take a stand with it. If you score, you can play some poker. If not, you're out.
If you are willing to invest $100 in a tournament, you'll probably learn a lot more by entering a $100 entry fee, no-rebuy event.
There's nothing innately wrong with, or unfair about, the maniac, multiple-rebuy tournament format. It just resembles playing craps a lot more than it resembles playing serious poker. If you want to try your hand at tournament poker, with a view towards eventually playing in larger events, you'll probably be much better off entering a no-rebuy or one-rebuy event. Within that structure, players show more respect for their chips, and you can learn lessons that will be useful as you work your way up the tournament ladder.
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Be sure you know the rules of the game. The player who knows the rules has a decided advantage in any game against players who are vague about them.
