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By Debbie Burkhead

By now I'm sure most of you know that Poker Digest was bought out by Card Player and will no longer be published. For those of you who were not aware of that I'm sorry to say, it's true.

Those of us who were lucky enough to have a regular column were not given the opportunity to bid a farewell to our faithful readers. I'd like to thank my readers for the encouragement, e-mails, responses and input I received.

My "Talking Tournaments" column in Poker Digest was dedicated to keeping poker players up to date on the TDA's rules and regulations along with controversial subjects pertaining to tournament play. I will continue doing that here on Pokerpages.com and look forward to your comments or suggestions.

The yearly meeting of the TDA was held Monday, July 15 at the Orleans in Las Vegas. I was invited to the meeting but due to a previous commitment I was unable to attend. That commitment was the ladies limit hold'em event at the Orleans Open. (I finished in the money, lucky 13th place, but that's another story).

I will report the outcome of that meeting as soon as I get all the details but for now I'd like to talk about something that disturbs a friend of mine. We were playing in the $230 limit hold'em event at the Orleans Open when she approached me with her concern.

Her name is Joan Destino and has recently fallen in love with tournament play. Because she takes her tournament play seriously she is concerned with issues that could improve tournament play.

This happen to be a rebuy tournament and at the break we discussed the importance of knowing who had made a rebuy and who hadn't made a rebuy. Her concern was not knowing who has or hasn't made a rebuy when moved to a new table. I agreed that this was an important factor and could make the difference in how someone plays a particular hand. If you know a player has taken his rebuy and is short stacked the odds of his gambling without a good starting hand is probably slim. On the other hand if he hasn't taken that rebuy he might be more apt to gamble knowing he can still rebuy. Having this knowledge will determine how you play you cards.

The solution I came up with was simple. All entrants receive a different color chip with their original buy-in, let's say orange, that must stay visible and when that player makes his rebuy he gives that chip to the dealer or floorman. Now when you break to a new table you can see who has or hasn't taken their rebuy. When the rebuy period ends the dealer collects all the remaining orange chips. This is also an excellent accountability solution for keeping track of rebuys for the tournament director.