Often, I invest my chips on entering a game of 20 or 30 players and end up playing against 100 players. Could Replay not limit players to 5 minute late entries? Hate to mention any other sites, but at one I know of, once the game starts, you can’t enter. People would have to decide to play or not to play, not see who is entered and jump in last minute. If this has been discussed before, I apologize for bringing it up again. I am not a big chips leader or anything, just would like a chance to win against a reasonable amount of players. I do play the heads up and 3 handed games, but often those players bluff every hand so it is not like real poker, I guess. Thanks for listening.
Replay tries to replicate real tournaments, would you deny Phil Helmuth his grand entrances to the WSOP?
At Pokerstars, where I played for a couple of years, the late registration for all my favourite tournaments was between 1 hour and half and 2 hours, and some tournaments even had the possibility of three re-buys. That meant I needed several hours to “get into the money”. Too long for my taste, and that was actually the reason why I left.
I really don’t think 10 or 15 minutes for late entries are too long. We all play here in our leisure time, between the one professional or family commitment and the other, so it can occasionally happen to be a few minutes late.
And do consider that the more players participate in a tourney, the higher are the prizes.
If you want to win against a reasonable number of players, why not stick to SNG? There are 2-table 12-seat SNGs, which are the smallest MTT you’re likely to run.
Late reg is a thing everywhere. Its a little weirder here because the games are basically turbos. People coming in late may sit down with only 30BB. That means they have 6-8 minutes to get something going or they will be at 15BB or less. Anyway, its just something to get used to. On the cash sites I play, when the end of late registration is coming up, you prepare yourself for the all-in fest that’s about to start. The people who have built up decent stacks can call and put space between themselves and the players who can’t. Once you know its coming, you adjust your strategy to prepare for it. That’s poker.
I could deal with less late registrations on the satellites though. You don’t know if its worth playing because sometimes the late regs put the expected returns under water. Either shorten the late reg period or increase the payouts to account for the additional players.
it used to be that way here.
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Thanks.
Good advice . Thanks. I will.
You could wait till the end of the late registration yourself. Then you would know how many are playing…
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A thought, maybe cap the late registration to T minutes or N seats, where N is some fraction of the number of players at the opening of the MTT. Once N late registrations come in, registration closes, or if N isn’t met the late reg expires at T min.
I understand many players don’t like late entries much, and I respect that, but I do, always hoping there’s at least 50 players so everyone making the final table makes the money. I used to only play high stakes though, I can see with low stakes or satellites that 5 minutes might be best
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I do too. I am all for late entries and I myself tend to sign up a few minutes later than the tourney starting time every now and then, so I don’t see it as a problem at all.
The downside to that is you miss a lot of the chips that are given up by the early losers.
Or you might be lucky to skip a part where someone might bust you out. It’s all speculations.
I can’t tell you how many MTTs I’ve won, where I had signed up during the late entry time.
True. And if it’s only a few minutes in, sometimes not much has happened and it’s really no different than starting when it starts.
I sign up late a lot too, and to me it doesn’t really matter. When I took my first 1st-place finish in a MTT, I came in as a late entrant. I wondered at the time if coming in late gave me an advantage. The way I saw it, I came in with the full-buy-in, and was in the middle of the field, with about half of the players having given some of their chips to the other half. This gave me a stack advantage over the losers, and a disadvantage against the winners. But how could I ever measure the difference between that situation, and the situation of coming into a MTT with the same number of players as had survived to that point, starting when they all start?
Another advantage of coming in late, you’ve mostly avoided the phase when the bingo players are still in it, creating chaos.
I think worrying about the size of the field is pointless, frankly. The longest MTT I’ve played in went over 2 hours, and the shortest wasn’t much less than 2 hours. When there’s more people in a MTT, they tend to eliminate each other. I’d expect that as the number of players grows in an MTT, the number of players you need to face directly should increase logarithmically, or perhaps at the square root of the number of players in the tournament.
Let’s conjecture that it’s the square root.
So, if 64 people come in to start, you’re looking at having to beat 8 of them yourself. That’s the number of players you’d need to beat at a 9-seat SNG. Realistically, you’re going to get re-balanced a few times, so the real number must be higher than 8. But since when you re-balance, you’re also leaving the surviving players at the old table behind, maybe they cancel out, and the number of players you have to eliminate is reasonably approximate to 8.
Now, if during the late reg phase, the total number of players balloons up to 100, you’ve gone from having to knock out 8 players to having to knock out 10, despite 36 more players coming in. So, yeah, it makes a difference, but not as great as you might think. Those 36 new players will knock each other out, and by the time you get to them, there’ll perhaps be 6 of them left in the mix. And of those 6, you might directly have to knock out 2 of them. Which, yeah, is harder, but not as dramatically harder as you might think at first.
I’m not a genius at probability, and I could be way off, but the above seems reasonably plausible to me. I wonder what others think of this reasoning.
I like to think some of the bingo players will lose by then )
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Arriving late often avoids the carnage. In my experience, one needs to have a respectable number of chips left when the numbers are reduced to 50% of the starting numbers. Then you need a good hand. Take as many chips as you can early without risking too much. Unless you come up against a freak hand, which I generally do, you will end up in the money. Only play certain hands which are more likely yo win. Be patient. Be prepared to pass if you flop a straight because someone will invariably get a flush or full house or in my case if I get a Ace high flush someone will have a straight flush.
Excellent suggestion. I often enter tournaments close to the end of late registration, and find that it it somewhat advantageous to already have several players who are short stacked to play against. (More liable to raise all-in preflop with marginal hands, more likely to fold to bluffs.)
People have busy lives and if you are going to play something like the daily Hijack tournament that is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time after arriving home from work at 7:30 p.m. you need every minute to walk the dog, help the kid with homework, eat, and so on, and if you go all the way in the tournament, it is going to be after 9:00 pm. I often extend the 5 minute break at 8:30 p.m. to 10 or 15 minutes, and on more than one occasion have folded my way into the money while on break.
When I do sit down to play Poker, I want to play immediately, and I will occasionally enter a sit-n-go, or even a 3-person sit-n-go if I only have a few minutes, but really prefer multi-table tournaments, which are much more exciting, so ideally I would like tournaments to have late reg until close to the time the next comparable tournament will open up. With 15 minutes late reg, you should never have to wait more than 15 mins, although like London buses, tournaments tend to come along in groups after an extended wait.
One more factor–when late entrants appear, assuming that the tournament has already met the guaranteed minimum prize money, then each new entrant means a bit more prize money (play chips) available.
I confess I am a late entry addict. Many of the reasons cited. Playing low blinds for 15 minutes for 120-chip pots, having fewer bingo players and - most important - feeling great that I am already middle of the field when I’ve done nothing! What I DO wish is that all late-entry times were the same. I don’t understand why the 8 p.m. American is 15 minutes (like most) and the 9 p.m. is 20 minutes? And there were a few I missed that were only 5 minutes. Why not have them all the same?
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I made the mistake of thinking the late registration times were all the same on more than one occasion. I remember rushing to settle down to a freeroll, feeling relieved to realize I could make it (so I thought) only to discover I had in fact missed it. I was surpsrised and thought to be extra careful. I’d assume the shorter time limit MTTs attract more latecomers in general.