As many of you will have played at a download Microgaming Casino you will no doubt have noticed there are slot tournaments available at most of them. They can also be offered at some Playtech sites, and usually there will be ‘freerolls’ (no cost entry) along with pay-tournaments where entry has a fixed fee and the prize pool is derived from the entries and rebuys/continues. To the novice, ‘rebuys’ and ‘continues’ may be a bit confusing. You should be aware that usually one or the other will be necessary to gain a prize-paying placing, especially in tournaments with significant prizes. These are often won by players though with large budgets who can spend on rebuys or continues.
So when you are playing either the Microgaming freerolls or the buy-in tournaments how do you strategize the use of rebuys and continues? Firstly, be aware of how many are available. Some tournaments with large prizes have up to 999 and if you haven’t the budget then unless you are exceptionally lucky first time and gain a large coin total it would be prudent to leave the contest. To this end, it often wise to enter the tournament and play as late as possible, when you have the maximum information regarding your rivals’ totals and positions available, and the score you will need to get a prize-playing place: 
Usually rebuys/continues will cost, even if the initial tournament is a freeroll tournament. In the example above you can continue 5 times and rebuy 10 times; this is where it’s important to make the correct decision. Firstly, a rebuy means you start all over again but you will not see a coins total or score until you’ve exceeded your previous score. So, on your first go you have scored 8,000. The leader group in the prize positions is from 15,000 upwards. You use a rebuy and you’ll stay on zero or 8,000 until (if you do) exceed 8,000, your original score. If this time your rebuy nets you 11,000 then that will be your score, and any further rebuys will have to exceed that. Don’t worry, you never lose you highest score when you rebuy, you can only better it or stay the same. (more…)