Late reg. into tournaments?

[lacroir]

How do you think about late regs? I'm talking about especially online ones now (though interested for live opinions as well).
For some reason when I think of late registration I mostly see it as I'm handicapped if I join. The average stack size has passed me already, also I join to a table where I don't have any tells from the others (while they might have already some as playing together for a while) and also my stack would be way smaller in BBs compared to if I started at the beginning.

E.g. from PS: now looking at a $1.10+R NLHE tournament. It's been running for 59 mins and late reg ends in 1 min. Stats:
- Starting stack: 3.000
- Max&Avg stacks: 22.781 & 7.365
- Blinds: 100/200 ante 25
- Entries: 131/196
- Places paid: 26

So, if I join I'll only have roughly 15BB and no tells from anyone.

What are the benefits that I don't see and might still worth to join such a tournament? Do you usually join late or at start time?

 

[fundiver199]

The benefits of joining late is, that the value of chips go up, when someone have already busted. This is usually referred to as "ICM", which mean Independant Chip Model. Another advantage is, you spend less time, so you can play more tournaments, if you are a winning player. But there are also several drawbacks including less time to make your skill edge show and in the case of joining very late skill edges being less important with short stacks like 15BB. So in general its completely reasonable to not join very late, and many good players has a minimum threadshold like 30BB. If a starting stack is less than that, they will not join or reenter.

R+A events are a bit special, since part of the goal in those is to make it to the add-on break as cheaply as possible and then purchase the add-on to pay less per chip on average. This makes last minute entry a viable strategy, but on pokerstars the advantage is less, because you usually have to play at least 10 minutes from the close of late registration to the add-on break. So on balance I would rather enter these events early, but entering in the last minute is not crazy either, especially since you can still rebuy.

Another and much more popular format, which require special considerations, are PKOs. These are the exact opposite as R+As, since as soon as someone is knocked out, money is taken out of the price pool. And if you enter as a below average stack, you also cant compete well for the remaining bounty money. And for that reason I pretty much never late register to a PKO except maybe within the first 2-3 blind levels, or if there is some massive overlay.

 

[valduer]

Great analysis!
Do you guys know whether the late registration phase is longer for normal MTTs compared to turbo and hyper formats? Would make sense but I never compared it.
If this is not the case, late reg would be worse in the faster formats

 

[lacroir]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. It makes sense, and I think I will go into ICM details - I heard about it already but never went deep.

@valduer: I think yes. Take for example a Sunday Storm, there it is 2:10 or 2:30 the late reg. and for other 'non-famous' normal tournaments I see usually late reg around 2 hours. For turbo I think this is more around 1 hour, and for hyper maybe even less. (At least on PokerStars)

 

[Mauricio Perrotta]

I'm going to talk only about the KO.
Registering late has its pros and cons.
As I see it, the good thing is that you find players with few chips going all in, another plus is that if you are lucky in the first 2 hands you will almost certainly secure the paybubble. The downside is that you have a lot of players with a lot more chips than you, and your stakes are raised easily, leaving you with no room to defend yourself.

 

[GERSteven]

if you register late you just have to be lucky the only advantage is the time you save. when you see that it's not far from the money and you can still stay in the tournament a late reg is good but what can you win? the buy-in at most if you don't get good cards because most of the others have a lot more chips and usually put them all-in. that is my experience.

 

[Arnakk2424]

How do you think about late regs? I'm talking about especially online ones now (though interested for live opinions as well).
For some reason when I think of late registration I mostly see it as I'm handicapped if I join. The average stack size has passed me already, also I join to a table where I don't have any tells from the others (while they might have already some as playing together for a while) and also my stack would be way smaller in BBs compared to if I started at the beginning.

E.g. from PS: now looking at a $1.10+R NLHE tournament. It's been running for 59 mins and late reg ends in 1 min. Stats:
- Starting stack: 3.000
- Max&Avg stacks: 22.781 & 7.365
- Blinds: 100/200 ante 25
- Entries: 131/196
- Places paid: 26

So, if I join I'll only have roughly 15BB and no tells from anyone.

What are the benefits that I don't see and might still worth to join such a tournament? Do you usually join late or at start time?

$/H is better for pro late reg players.
Usually my ABI is around $10 , I may take a look at -$5 tournament and register into those.
Some pro players are only late reg over all rooms because they know they will make more $ per hour.
You gain equity by peoples already busted.

 

[redmast]

I try not to participate in tournaments that register too late. Normal late check-in can be no longer than 30 minutes.

 

[ppartizan2]

I think its dumb if you are like really really late into a tourney. If uts already like level 5 6 blinds, its kind of useless, because you will have to all in in the next few hands, or you just lose to the blinds. And even if you win an all in, you are still a second away from losing.

 

[Risto234]

I think its dumb if you are like really really late into a tourney. If uts already like level 5 6 blinds, its kind of useless, because you will have to all in in the next few hands, or you just lose to the blinds. And even if you win an all in, you are still a second away from losing.

Well in bounty games doing it is not that bad as long as you end up in the table where some dudes (with slightly bigger bounty) are already on the brink of elimination so technically all you have to do is finish the job ...

 

[Fernando_RO]

I'm going to give my opinion:
For me, it's better to play a tournament from the start regardless of the tournament, since you can play without so much pressure, a little calmer and you can wait to play the right hands to be able to increase your chips, otherwise when you enter late registration, especially in those tournaments where the chips increase quickly, your playing range decreases much more, and you may be forced to play worse hands because the blind ones eat your chips.

 

[otters]

I like to play from the start.
Just want to get the feel of the game and see what the other players are doing.
Not saying that suits everyone but for me it feels right.