Freerolls should stay at 5 minutes but a consistent approach to buy in games would be good. I like 10 minutes because it allows you to wait out the bingo players at times, especially in rebuy games.
Why not make late reg on all MTT’s a lucky 8 minutes? 
My opinion, for what it is worth, is that 10 minutes is ample time for late registration. I also would like to see all no shows bumped at the end of the registration time. I feel applying this to all games would make things a lot more fair and easy to understand.
Why not put all latecomers at their own tables? It might take a minute or more to get enough people to start playing. Call that a penalty, but it’s not a drastic one.
After a time the AI begins sorting the tables, and the latecomers can be melded into the tables of the timely people.
Having reviewed the feedback on late registration, it seems the most common answer is a desire to see how many people would be playing. Having a set start time would not remove that ability…
The second most common answer is an inability to manage one’s own time. I have an answer to that problem, and perhaps you do, too.
few posts seen say join late to avoid the bingo play. yeah, that’s called folding and being patient. this probably happens in real games as well. players got fold till then, or might get a calling hand bust these players out and doubling up your stack.
funny thing to me is players say oh they don’t want to wait 15-30 mins for next one, but tourney you registered late for , providing doing well takes up way more than 15-30 mins was unwilling too wait for. most tournaments take hour + to finish, but can’t wait for next one? makes no sense at all.
I see that tournaments have different times for late registration, it should be a standard! Another fact is that it is a very long time for late registration, it should only be for 5 minutes.
I think 10 minutes’ late registration is more than adequate for all tournaments (tourneys, not “tournies” for heaven’s sake). There are those who only come in a minute before registration is closed because they can start with a full chip stack, while others who were in the tourney originally have either busted out or lost a considerable amount of chips.
It is VERY annoying when someone “leaves” or sits out toward the end of a tournament hoping to make it to the payout. When someone is sitting out like that, larger chip stacks get into a head-to-head challenge, and then a person with more chips than the one sitting out, gets busted, and doesn’t even earn any chips while the one taking the coward’s way out (not playing) earns chips. If a player doesn’t make any action for five turns, that person should be eliminated from the game entirely–whether at the beginning, middle or end of the game.
Even if that “sitting out” player is on a break (not “brake”–those are on cars), five times around is plenty of time for a player to get a drink, go to the restroom, etc. and return.
Good Luck everyone on being picked for the 100,000 chip prize!! How about a “free entry” into the Half Mil Thrill, too??
Sorry if this is slightly off-topic, but I doubt that most people are using late registration to somehow “game” the system.
When I feel like pokering, I log in and look for a tournament that I can join right then and there. With late reg, there is usually one I can play, without it, there wouldn’t be. With a few rare exceptions, I’m not going to wait 15 minutes to play, and I’m not going to schedule my life around free poker. When I don’t find a game, I log off and go do something else.
Since I’m a little off-topic anyway, I’ll just add that the 7.5K regionals should start 15 minutes earlier, and the 20k regionals 15 minutes later. The additional 30 minute gap between them would make it easier to play both when you are doing well in the first one.
Then you could make all late registrations 15 minutes, and that would be that.
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Would like to see late registration time cut back to a max of 30 minutes. I really prefer 10 or 15 minutes as otherwise games drag out too long. (Many of us have lives outside of poker may be called away if a tournament does not end in a reasonable amount of time.)
Not everyone is tied to their screens. I login when and if I have the spare time. But I will not sit waiting for a game for a long time so late registration is useful sometimes. More annoying is the refresh time on the lobby saying a STT table is open but isn’t. And I don’t even look at MTTs with RB anymore.
Please send my chips via FedEx.,
It could be changed to 2 blind levels and boot all the no-show players at the same time as it closes.
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The White Rabbit is definitely in favour of being able to be late and, after all, if it weren’t for him being late, Alice would never have found Wonderland.
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Hi Everyone, thanks for the feedback thus far.
This topic is always one under scrutiny but I want to stir the pot a little with Replays perspective on some of the points made.
One overriding factor which might be changed eventually, but cannot be avoided is the fact we start tournaments every 15 minutes. We like to keep registration open for as long as possible so that anyone logging in on the off chance of a game always has a tournament they can start straight away. I know waiting 5 minutes is not really a hardship for most of us, but it is a question of having games available as much as possible.
Consistency is important because people like to know what to expect, but variety is vital too. Not all 20,000 entry tournaments should have the same period of late registration, else it becomes too stale. I like the idea of using blind levels as a metric for how long late registration could last, though. The blind levels tend to dictate the pace of the tournament too. This would also help the issue where the Late registration period is too close to the No Shows being removed.
Many people have said that 10 minutes is plenty of time for late registration, or even as low as 5. I should point out that cutting late registration reduces the number of players and therefore prize pools and ultimately Guarantees. If you join a 20,000 entry tournament with a Guarantee of 1,000,000, even if there are initially 20 players, you should not be surprised if the eventual number of players is 50 or 60.
As has been mentioned we do have 5 minutes for the freerolls and players do manage to attend on time for those, so cutting the period would not necessarily cut the prize pools too deeply. On the other hand, some players like to join as late as possible as a strategy. Should we deny them this option? There has been much debate about the pros and cons of Late registration and no-one has really proven either way if there is an innate advantage to coming late to the party or playing from the start. It is people’s individual mind-set…
Thanks again for the excellent discussion. keep it coming
Rob
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Variety in tournament types, sure, but in buyins? You have all different buyins, different leaderboards, different kinds or rebuys, and tournaments with bounties, not to mention Holdem in FL, ML, and NL, Omaha, PLO and hi/lo and Royal, and variety within these all too.
Just out of curiosity, what makes you think that a standardized buyin period would make anything stale? Do you have some actual data that supports this claim? I’m just curious how you came to that conclusion.
It is no secret that I am not a fan of late registration, but reading all the replies here it does seem fifty percent of people like the flexibility it provides. I also see Sunny’s point that we have such variety in the games and promotions played, so would a standardised time be more acceptable to all? As opinion is so divided, and many people find the difference in late registration times confusing, this might prove a more acceptable answer.
Hey Rob - I think the standard understanding of late registrations is that both variance and ROI are reduced the later people enter any given tournament. There is also the consideration of winrates/hr. As you indicated, its a matter of choice and flexibility. Some people want to see as many hands as possible and accept the higher variance. Some people want the lower variance route and accept lower ROI’s because of it.
I don’t see how late registrations detract from the games at all. The more people enter, the more there is to play for. If there is some consideration for leaderboard points vs payouts, then people competing for those points need to find the strategy that best suits their goals. I wouldn’t reduce the options for the casual player to suit people playing essentially a different game. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m all for anything that helps this site more accurately mimic cash play sites. While many of them have gone insane with late reg and reentries as rake-traps, this site’s very modest policies seem reasonable enough to me. I would even get behind adding a single reentry to most games (would address a host of issues, including making sure people had a game to jump in right away if they busted early).
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wouldn’t be scrutiny if it wasn’t implemented in first place.
how about do away with late registration, but have every tourney open up all the time till the start time?
make a lobby and leader boards for players don’t want late registration. why can’t we have that option? new players got their special freerolls. I don’t know how it would work with promotions, but players who don’t want late registrations needs options as well.
If someone doesn’t like late reg, they can simply enter at the end of the late reg period. At that point, there is effectively no more late reg, and you will know how many players are in the tourney,
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nope. I believe registering on time.
I generally won’t sign up for an MTT until after the tournment has started - i don’t want to commit the chips, only go get pulled away, or get to playing rings and forget I signed up. After about the second tournament i played, i realized the number of entrants at the published start time wasn’t an indicator of field size, so I quickly adapted - if i only want to play a certain field size i will wait through most of late reg to verify numbers.
I don’t know why people would think it should be abolished - live poker tournaments pretty much always have late registration periods.
The Saturday Fever and Grandaddy of them All tourneys are relatively slow blind structures, so they could maybe extend to 15 minutes late registration instead of the current 10.