Late Reg Tournies

[kardmania]

What is the proper entry strategy?

enter asap or enter as late as possible

and why?

[UIIIU]

ive wondered this many times Kard and even know i really think i do better when i enter late i believe playing the whole tourny is you best bet if you have skills better than the avg person in the tournament. The simple reasoning behind this is you are able to see more hands on avg because of your chip to blind ratio and the more hands you see the better odds you have of winning chips from ppl who are less experienced.

But a counter argument would be that chip equity is higher when u register late because ppl have busted but there soo many ppl in these that the value you are gaining is prolly too small to calculate. Just think about a 9 max sng lets say you have AK vs QQ first hand and for an example lets say its exactly a 50/50 chance of winning so you have a 50% chance of being out of the tourny and a 50% chance of winning the hand, but it doesn't increase your chances of winning by 50% so by registering late you are minimizing these - plays which are very tough to get away from when they happen early, well I call them negative plays but Im sure many will argue with me.

So I would have to say if you register on time it minimizes variance when compared to late registering, but if you have a tough time laying down big hands late registering might fit you best, all depends on your playing style i guess

[kardmania]

If you enter early you do get the advantage of learning your opposition to some extent. Lengthy late registrations always add to the player pool and it just feel wrong to play for an hour and find that you are facing a larger player pool than when you started.

I always thought I was missing something obvious as to the proper philosophy to deal successfully with this paradox.

[JoeShowdown]

Sign up at the start or don't even bother. Ok maybe if it's 10 minutes late go play it. But these ridiculous 1 hour late reg on stars and tilt. Stupid or those 2 hour mini ftops late reg oh my that was sad. My first tourney goal is to outlast the latereg and 2hours is a long time. Hellmuth sux. Play from the start when the donks are ready to blast their overpair hands to your 25 offsuittrips. Play the flops and bust the donks. If you wait for latereg you won't have that chance as much.

[kardmania]

The late reg games also exist on AP and UB. It used to be 10-20 mins and now hours.

I guess there is some marketing rationale for this but my guess is that the games just dont fill out as well as anticipated so the site holds the games open to help cover the guarantees.

I think an hour is way too long and two hours is obscene. Not in a good way.

[thebronxkid]

I'm in agreement with Joe. Either register at the start or don't bother. I have never used that option as a stratgery. The handful of times I've registered late has been because I arrived late to the game. I don't know but when I've entered these games late and I see a player with 4 or 5 times the openning chip count, my stratergy changes from my normal play. I've notice that I loosen my play to the point where I'm playing too many hands trying to "catch up" too the front runners. I have no problems with a tourny having late reg during the 1st 2 blind levels. Late registration thru the break or beyond is INSANE.

[TeUnit]

you may have got aa first hand

the longer the tourney goes the "better" the players are

gl at the tables,

t

[kardmania]

Initially I thought one was best to enter at the beginning; however, when I noticed that the majority of the players were entering late I started to question these thoughts.

[ninixnini]

i played in a sat tourney on cake. started with 13 at the end of the 1 hour late registration 43 lol. they were registering right up to the end when blinds were about to rise to 150/300 with 25 ante. they were buying in for less than 5 big blinds. if u are going to register late know how many big blinds u are buying in for. also really late registrants are going to have to gamble so this will be a tourney dynamic u will have to be ready/adjust for.

[jsawe]

Agree with Joe sign up early or not at all. I have seen players buy-in after 30 minutes of play when there were already a half dozen or more players with stacks 5 or 6x the starting amount. The one exception is where the number of players relative to the buy-in reward is excellent, the blinds are still small, and the there are a number of eliminated players and their losses are evenly distributed across the remaining field. While I have seen these conditions on AP, so have many others, I watched the field double in a matter of minutes, thus canceling out any benefit of starting late.