Poker Tournament Late Registration Strategy

Playing It Hard: A Good Late Game Strategy in Multi-table Poker Tournaments. The different participants of multi-table poker tournaments may find it somehow helpful to play very tight during the early stages. This will help them build a good reputation as a solid and respectable poker player. Ike Talks Poker: Thoughts on limited re-entries and late registration By Isaac Haxton on 2nd November 2020 0 Comments There has recently been quite a bit of discussion about long registration periods and unlimited re-entries and their impact on (particularly online) poker tournaments. While this theory makes plenty of sense there is a credible argument against it: Rebuy opponents will rightly say that by this logic the “perfect” rebuy strategy would be to wait until the end of the late registration period to register for the tournament; so long as the double rebuy and the add-on are not disproportionately small compared.

For 50 years, the World Series of Pokerhas been the pinnacle, the Pantheon, that all poker players aspired to takepart in. For 50 years, the WSOP Championship Event – now going under themoniker of the “Main Event” – has been the apex of the poker world. Winningthat event has earned the player the unofficial title of “World Champion,” becauseof the arduous task in getting through the world-class players that attend thecompetition and the marathon-length time frame.

Now, however, the “powers that be” in theivory tower at Caesars Entertainment and the WSOP offices have made anotherludicrous decision that is tarnishing the once-impeccable legacy of the event.Caesars announced earlier this week that late registration for the ChampionshipEvent would be allowed up until the end of Level 6, or the end of the firstlevel of either flight of Day 2 action. As long as your buy in is in the cageat the Rio and you’re seated at the table before Level 7 starts, you don’t haveto go through the minefield of Day 1A, 1B or 1C! This is an absolutelyludicrous decision on many levels.

Roll With the Changes

The changes to the WSOP Championship Event(and I will continue to call it that – if it was good enough in 1971, it shouldbe good enough now) have been gradual, as has the general degradation oftournament poker. First it was the multiple Day Ones for the Championship Event,but that was a necessity; with the onslaught of players taking part in thetournament since 2003, the only way to get them all in the same arena at the sametime would be to put them in Sam Boyd Stadium.

Next came the multiplier on chips for thebuy-in. In the beginning, you used to get a “dollar for dollar” on your chips –10,000 chips for $10,000. It was originally thought that by giving two- orthree times the stack would allow for deeper play, but tournament directorsactually monkeyed with the structures so that there wasn’t a real increasein the deepness of the stack. In 2020, players will receive 60,000 for their$10K buy in…ridiculous, but people like to see big mountains of chips in frontof players at the final table to make their tournaments look MORE important.

Now we’ve gotten to the disease thatre-entries/rebuys and late registration have wrought.

Officials with the WSOP have, to thispoint, been able to rebuff any moves towards offering a re-entry for theChampionship Event and they have asserted in the past that they would neverconsider that move. But just this year, they did allow for late registrationthrough the first day of the crown jewel of the tournament series. There’splenty of argument on the good or ill of this situation, but it does allow forplayers who might have travel issues to make it to the tables without penalty.

Poker Tournament Late Registration Strategy 2019

Don’t Want to Play Day 1? You Don’t HaveTo!

In 2020, the WSOP Championship Event willallow players to completely avoid playing in any of the three-Day Ones byextending late registration to the end of Level 6, the first level of Day 2. Thisis not because players complained that travel conflicts were keeping them from makingthe tournament, or a medical emergency was keeping them away. It is being doneto completely avoid having to survive the early carnage, which is arguably thegreatest challenge of the tournament itself.

None other than longtime WSOP color commentator Norman Chad, who has seen some poker in his lifetime, took to the virtual wall on Twitter to voice his displeasure with the changes. “Allowing Day 2 late registration for the World Series of Poker Main Event is an awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful decision by my friends at the WSOP,” ‘The Couch Slouch’ chirped across his feed. Debate was about 50/50 from Chad’s followers, reflective of the general poker population.

This changes the entire complexion of the event. Players who have the skill and experience to come in on Day 2 – and it is either of the two Day Twos that will be played – with what is roughly an average stack can, if played properly, spin that stack up without having had to work their way through any of the Day One issues. They also would be able to avoid having to compete against approximately a quarter of the field; in 2019, more than 2500 players were eliminated from the tournament by the time Day 2 began.

Play the WHOLE TOURNAMENT!

Call me a traditionalist, but a pokertournament – and especially the WSOP Championship Event – is supposed to beplayed in its entirety. While it is a convenience to allow players to registerinto the tournament after it has started, it is something that has been abusedby many. Part of that abuse is, instead of having to play through the earlystages of an event, these people earn basically a day off by not having to slogthrough the lower blinds with the “dirty heathens” who are there from thestart.

Too many poker tournaments nowadays have gotten away from what tournament poker originally was, an equal battleground for players to prove their skills or their fates. With the advent of re-entry tournaments, late registration and other changes that have come about because of the casino’s ubiquitous greed, the poker field has become tilted towards professionals with either years of experience (it takes incredible skill to handle a middling stack and turn it into something) or massively deep pockets (when Daniel Negreanu is complaining about how the re-entry tournament is abused, you know there’s a problem). With these actions, the poker world is pushing away those who might take their shot and become the next poker superstar, simply because they don’t have the same advantages as those mentioned.

Poker Tournament Late Registration Strategy 2020

Normally when the WSOP announces these changes (and especially changes to the Championship Event), they don’t go back. But this is one of those times that they should rescind their change and, at the minimum, return to late registration only running through the Day Ones. The pinnacle event on the poker landscape doesn’t need manipulations and trickery to ensure that people will participate and/or watch the event – it just needs to present an equal playing field for those that are involved.