I took a look at all the guarantee low and mid stakes tournaments on WPN and how long these tournaments took. Why are these all so long?


I see tournaments where the buyin is $10 and its a $1500 guarantee and it last for 8 hours and it has no more than 200 players max. I mean are there really players out there that like to play this long for tournaments? I can't imagine anyone wants to play tournaments that last this long. If a tournament last at least 8 hours, surely theres at least 1000 players. On pokerstars if you have 200 players in a tournament, these dont last more than 5 hours at the absolute max.


Im wondering what players on wpn even like playing. I mean, do most regs just not register until the 2nd hour etc? Why dont they just copy pokerstars structures?

Something needs to be done about the players that are regging some of the reg speed guarantees at the last second. There is almost always a table that consists only of these players(because the table was just added) and every one of them stalls and timebanks to the max until they get hand for hand, usually in 2-3 hands. They have nearly 100% chance of cashing and they are taking money out of the pockets of players who play the tournaments honestly.

Some possible solutions would be ending late reg earlier or mixing the tables up as soon as late reg ends so they are not at the same table.

I actually spent some time yesterday checking out all of the MTTs and looking at the structures.

I look at this entirely differently than you guys. When I was playing on PokerStars I played a $3 tournament with over 4,000 players and won $384. I played for about 6 hours. Even since then I've loved that type of tournament. I'll play as long as I have to for a shot at winning that many buy-ins.

I'm not saying that your opinion wrong for your situation. Everyone's schedule is different. I play full-time and I'll even adjust my sleep schedule to what I want to play. I also think that I have an edge in those tournaments because I'm willing to play for eight hours and not miss a hand, and of course, one big hand can make a huge difference in a tournament. Two days ago, a couple hours into an MTT, I more than doubled my stack shoving pocket kings in a 3-way preflop all-in.

I don't see the late registration that you describe as a disadvantage at all. If a bunch of players want to come into the tournament in the last five minutes of late registration, with a very small stack compared to mine, that's dead money as far as I'm concerned. They have to shove and I'm more than happy to pick them off with any decent hand and add to my stack.

It's hard for a poker site to please everyone. Obviously a lot of people like the kind of tournament that you describe and I like to play. It's also true that a lot of players want to play tournaments that don't take more than two or three hours to play. I played an On Demand tournament recently and it took about two hours to make the final table. Some of the non-guaranteed freezeout or KO tournaments end fairly quickly as well. There are even a few guarantee tournaments with late registration of 90 minutes or two hours, which isn't too bad for most people.

We all feel strongly about what we want to play and what the schedule should look like. A poker site will never please everyone.

EDIT: I like your idea of shuffling the tables after late registration. That makes a lot of sense.

The fundamental problem is that people are able to register late so close to being ITM, not that they are able to register late in general, though that could be an issue to some.

If they paid out fewer players late entrants wouldn't be able to just stall into the money. As an example, in an MTT with 81 paid and 86 players left with a minute left to register... I mean it's just simple ICM to understand why it's +EV to late reg, even if 15 others do as well. And that EV has to come from somewhere (it comes from everyone who registered early and built a stack) It is a problem if a table full of players can enter last second, take 4-5 minutes a hand and almost assure that they cash.

Now, they have fixed this on some of their MTTs, but they should fix them on more.

For clarification, I'm saying that instead of paying out 20% of the field, they paid out 15%, then their would be so much less incentive to stall that the problem would be a lot smaller.

That makes sense, and I like your idea of paying less of the field for another reason. I started playing on PokerStars when payouts were changing from 10% of an MTT field, and that percentage grew bigger and bigger. Even though I knew I wasn't good enough to go deep very often, I realized what that would mean when I WAS one of the top players--less reward for those who do the work to get to the top.

For that selfish reason alone I would be in favor over cutting the percentage of players that cash.

Is this really an issue? Is there like a group of players that only reg last second trying to mincash everything? I mean, if that's the case, ok. I can't even be upset about that because it's pretty much a dead seat. The way late reg is currently structured is just the nuts for good players. I don't see that changing.

You can change payout structures tho. Be my guest lol.

The math indicates that those players cost the rest of the players equity, and they certainly are not "dead seats."

Man, I must have alot of equity in WPN games lol. Never once have I felt the effect of it. Of course, cashing isn't even a goal for me. Maybe people really care about min-cashing, but I can't see them also being good players.

But yea, let's experiment. My guess is you want 3 hour late reg max, probably less. So let's do that and cut pay% to 15% like you want and those pesky 5k stacks won't be there anymore past the 150/300 level. Of course half the usual field will be missing as well and GTD's will have to be cut and I'll have to find another site, as well as others.

Sounds awesome. I wonder why I didn't think about how to ruin the last good American poker site sooner.

Well you probably do have a lot of equity in WPN games, they're soft as all hell, but that doesn't mean you haven't lost equity due to the structure being what it is.

But calm down there, and please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say anything about 3 hour late registration, other than that the structure as it is COMBINED with the high percentage of players paid out creates a situation in which it is +EV for an average player or below average player to get in at the last moment, and that the way they can achieve that is often by stalling - which makes the game completely un enjoyable for people that play for fun. Frankly, 3 hour late registration has never bothered me. If anything, having the option to register late knowing it's massively +EV for me is a good thing from a purely selfish perspective, and if they fix that issue, having new entries with tiny stacks is also good for me in the long run. So no, 3 hour late registration isn't an issue (for me.)

Though, I'm not sure why I'm using my time to discuss this here, when I know that WPN has tested out the exact thing I am recommending and the results were very good, that although they had slightly smaller fields, they also had no complaints about stalling (which is something they get a lot of complaints about.) They simply threw in a couple more MTTs at that buy in level, and everyone was happy.

Yes, it is an issue, primarily in micro/low stakes tournaments. There is a group of 10-15 players that late reg at the last second, 9 of them get sat at the sametable, and they never do anything but timebank and stall. They cash very close to 100% of the time. A group of players can do nothing but late reg and stall and print 2-3 dollars a game on 6$ abi, which comes from the other players tournament equity, and you don't see a problem with this?

off topic.. I actually kept track of a weird stat. I played in 2 mtts tonight. made the final 3 tables in both. I started keeping track with 6 tables left in both. in 34 out of 39 instances of an all in. The person with more chips and the worse beginning hand won. 4 different times i saw Aces get cracked with (2 2, K 10, J J, and A K) the dueces ended with quads. K 10 flopped a boat, the J J ended up with a straight, and the A K flopped a flush.

there were 12 instances where there was an example of (A K vs K Q) or something to that effect. and the Q would hit.

My final hand was A K suited and lost to A 9 when the flop was 10 9 J, 4, 6. Imo, astronomical to see this happen as frequently as it happened.. Now im not an idiot, i know bad beats happen, and with online, you are bound to see more occurences. I just thinks its a bit ridiculous.

12 instances of something isn't astronomal at all.

Poker is a game where you have to think about the long term. Small sample sizes don't mean anything.

If you flip a coin you could get heads 12 times. Weird things can happen. But if you make the sample size bigger, things will even out in the long term. If you flip the coin 20 times, or 30, it becomes less and less likely that you will get all headheads. If you do it a thousand times, you'll get what you might expect, something very close to exactly 50% heads.

Twice in my last 10 tournaments I had the nuts and was knocked out by quads on the river. That's not amazing, it's just something that will happen once in a while as part of a large sample size. It's possible that in my next 100 tournaments I won't see anyone show quads.

Don't worry about small sample sizes, they don't prove anything.

i do understand what coin flips are about. I think you are under-representing what i was actually saying. yes having 5 5 against A K is about a coin flip. A A vs J J isnt anywhere close to a coin flip. Neither is A K vs K Q. The odds are dramatically different. When you factor in I saw it personally happen that many times with the percentage difference. That is where the ridiculous occurrence is. Seeing A x win over A higher is where the percentages are different. A K vs K Q is a 73% favorite. A A vs A K is 87%. A K vs any A x is about 73%.. and so on and so on.

34 wins out of 39 is an 87% win rate. So the odds of worse hands winning that many times is where the astronomical probability comes into play. you would expect your aces to get cracked only 5 times in 39 against A K. Yet the exact opposite was happening.

^^^ however you gotta justify losing buddy. But I think you're taking this poker thing a bit too seriously lol. BTW, this isn't BBV. This isn't the place to complain about variance.

The worst tourneys for this were the late 11 2500 and the 27.5 5k. They've since changed the payouts on those so they pay less places and it is not possible to reg and stall to the money. Since then game play has gotten much better in those tourneys and the time from the end of reg to the money is no longer a miserable stall fest. They also moved to paying less places in the 11s that they increased from 2k to 2500. There has not been a large decrease in the overall prize pool and none of the tourneys are in danger of overlaying. If they get positive feedback about those I would imagine they will expand the other payout structure to more tourneys where stalling after reg is an issue.

totally agree but thank you for clarifying this

Don't think this will go over very well in bbv either fwiw. Come back with a much, much larger sample size though and I will hear you out.

So much for that prediction.

It's a good thing that I understand variance and sample size or I would be in the looney bin right now. In my last 20 tournaments I've now been knocked out by rivered quads three times. I also got knocked out yesterday with a rivrered Q-high flush when villain hit the one-outer for a straight flush. I also made quads once myself but only won a small pot.

I somehow managed to play about breakeven during those 20 tournaments.

Message from earth:
it is irrelevant what door the quad card comes on, and it is also possible that you are in the looney bin without realizing that too.

The 2500 and the 1000 afternoon/evening games that happened a lot in and I'm guilty of joining very very late more than once based on when I get home. Other times I am in at level 3 or 4. The tables have not been completely full the last two minutes and I haven't seen this happen the last week, maybe holiday related. I don't think I have seen this at all when the purse is bigger, like the BIG10 6PM game and never in high buyins.

If the network creates new tables leaving 1 or 2 empty seats the final minutes, that might end the brand new table of all new players. Of course, leaving a table you are comfortable with would bring about new complaints.

It is irritating as hell when the blinds are 500/1000 and you have a table full of new seats to have to wait for two or three button passes to break the bubble.

Is it difficult to play 5-10bb poker? Why do you have to wait 3 orbits? You can play before the bubble ends you know... Maybe bust a few shorties..

Many more things should be irritating you at a higher level than this.

I have ADD as well as trouble moving information from short-term to long-term memory, so I'm halfway to the looney bin already. On the other hand, Phil Laak has ADHD and talks about the mother ship, so you can be crazy and still be good at poker.

I think he is referring to the fact a new table is formed with only late reg players, not one that he is seated at. Those players simply will just sit and wait, extending the bubble hoping to just min cash. I am not sure why you always have to have such a ****ty attitude, maybe sitting behind a computer all day and having no friends has something to do with it.

Have you tried the wonderful new superdrug, Marijuana?

Im not saying I disbelieve your story, but I can see how some will. 20 games is not alot of poker, hardly more than 2k hands and mostly a one day session will cover 20 games. And you're saying you ran into quads 3 times in less than 2k hands. While this isn't impossible, it has to be up there with the most improbable things to happen.

Now if you understand variance, you understand that. But it sounds made up for sure.

****tiest attitude of 2016 confirmed.