Late Registration

Every poker tournament that I know of, both online and live, offers late registrations nowadays. There are a number of pros to this for the operators. For live tournaments it allows the players more flexibility to get to the venue whereas they may not have been able to arrive on time due to work or other commitments. It also lets lazy poker players sleep until 2pm and still allow them to play the tournament. This is of course good for the venue as it allows them to get more bums on seats which in turn makes them money. Online is pretty much the same, except that in the online world there is almost always the option to register a tournament on time given the plethora of tournaments available to us nowadays. To want to late register a tournament there has to be some real value on offer, in the form of an overlay or a soft field.

I am a big fan of arriving at the venue early, whether the venue is the Dusk Till Dawn Casino in Nottingham, or my brand new man cave. Thank you to the lovely Emma by the way for buying me a poker table for Christmas and tackling all the awful, argument inducing, flat pack that I loathe so much to house my whiskey and trophies in. And thank you to my father in law for decorating it too, another thing I am useless at! The reason I like to get the venue early is twofold, firstly I don’t like to feel rushed, I like to be punctual so that I have plenty of time to get settled in, have a snack and a drink and get my mind set in order before hitting the tables. Secondly and this may seem obvious, but I like starting out with the same amount of chips as everyone else.

You see when you late register a tournament the average stack is always larger than the stack you will buy in with. If the starting stack is 50,000 chips and your opponents on average have 60,000 chips, then that is a 20% deficit. I really think poker players over estimate their abilities to overcome this shortfall, as poker players are oft to do with their own opinions of their game.

In order to be able to late register effectively the field must be soft enough for you to have an edge to overcome your chip deficit or the prize pool in the form of an overlay needs to be able to justify your late registration.

There is another factor, and that is how many big blinds you late register with. If you late register thinking the field is soft, you need to have the ammunition to be able to out play your opponents. If you late register with 20 big blinds you will really struggle to outmanoeuvre your opponents as there are only so many moves you can employ at this blind level. Personally I want at least 50 big blinds to late register a tournament, unless there is overlay or a particularly soft field on offer I won’t go below this number.

One often fallacious argument I hear for late registering is that “my hourly rate is so low when the blinds are so low!” I often note that while this is true, it is only true if you are doing something else that makes you money instead of playing as any small hourly rate at the tables is always >0. Another factor is that the hourly rate is often not all that low. The field is at its softest at the very beginning of any tournament as the weaker players have yet to bust yet. Another factor is that as a thinking player your edge is greatest when you have information. I’d personally rather gather my information on my opponents when the blinds are tiny in relation to my stack so that I am well prepared for when the real war begins when the blinds start representing a larger % of my stack. Let’s imagine I late register a tournament with 30 big blinds and find pocket jacks and face a raise and a 3bet. I might often go all in here, but had I been present at the table to observe my opponent’s tendencies then I might actually be able to make a correct fold should the 3bettor be a rock or not 3bet bluff enough. I’d much rather find that information out in the early levels when mistakes are less costly than when the blinds are higher and a mistake from not knowing my opponents tendencies is all the more expensive.

A very valid reason for late registering a tournament would be lack of sleep. If I have slept poorly then a few hours extra sleep may really pay dividends especially at the end of a long days play when a mistake due to fatigue could cost you your entire buy in.

Of course this is a very clinical assessment of late registration. If the tournament looks like fun and you can afford it then get stuck in and enjoy the game.