Freezeout
Also known as: Freeze-out, Freeze Out
A tournament format where busting once eliminates you for good — no buying back in. Every chip is irreplaceable, so survival matters more.
One bullet, no second chances
A freezeout is the simplest tournament format: you get one entry, and the moment you bust you're out — no rebuy, no re-entry, no second bullet. The classic WSOP Main Event is a freezeout.
The strategic consequence is that your chips are irreplaceable. In re-entry events you can reload, so chip-EV roughly equals dollar-EV early and gambling for a big stack is cheap. In a freezeout every chip you lose is gone for good, which raises the ICM/survival weight of your stack even far from the money.
- Early — avoid thin, high-variance flips you'd happily take with a re-entry safety net; protect the stack you can't rebuild.
- Don't overcorrect — freezeout still rewards accumulating chips; play tight-aggressive, not passive nit poker.
Net: shade a touch tighter than the same spot in a re-entry, especially in marginal coinflip-for-stacks situations.
Example
Level 2, you flop top set but face a raise that puts the action all-in for 60bb with a clean draw to beat you. In a re-entry, calling the flip is trivially fine — you can fire another bullet. In a freezeout, that same flip ends your tournament if you lose, so the survival cost is real; you can correctly pass marginal coin-flips you'd snap-take with a reload available.