In a small freezeout tournament with fast blinds. Final table was made early on as players were busting out pretty fast. Positions decided for final table and play started. Then a late registration turns up and the tournament director asks whether we want to break up the final table into two tables to accommodate the new arrival? We said "No".
I have never heard of this before. I thought once the final table has started if you arrive late then too bad.
Thoughts?

I’ve never heard of a rule that says “late reg until xxx unless FT reached”? It certainly has to be in the rules somewhere if that should be the case.

Just follow the existing procedure for late registrations. Not sure why you thought that about final tables. What if it started out with only enough players for one table?

There should at least be a rule about what happens if it gets down to one player while late reg is still open.

I see nothing magic about a FT that should close late registration. that being said, TD's normally should be careful about combining tables when late reg is still open.

I would guess the only answer here would be to play 11 handed until someone busts

Rules or no rules, I'm wondering why the TD is asking the players for their opinions on how to proceed

Yeah, that is strange. The TD should be telling the players what is going to happen.

Anyway, the TD should allow the player to register as an alternate (if allowed) and he can take a seat at the FT if one opens up before late reg is closed. Making them play 11 handed is bad. Making them break into 2 tables is even worse.

In a place that runs small tournaments where this is even possible, it's likely they don't wait for a full 7 or 8 before opening a second table like most of the casinos I've seen. Their players are probably used to seeing tables of 5 and 6 pretty regularly.

But this tournament had already started and as players busted out, they combined tables to one final table. At that point forcing them to split is ridiculous.

First thing is house rules apply. In a small room, the rules could very much be dependent on the whims of the TD. I've played in rooms like this and often it will come down to what the regulars want to do. It isn't a good way to run it, but where the difference between profitability and loss is a matter of a few regulars staying or going, it happens.

I'd vote for making the latecomer wait until a seat was open.

I'll just note that during the early part of the online poker boom, a profitable strategy was to simply sit out an SNG once you bought in. People would bust out so fast that you could usually pick up 3rd place and occasionally 2nd place. Eventually it modified that you would wait the first 30 minutes before playing where it would often be 4 handed or less.

I've seen this in satellites at major tournament series. If there's no guarantee they might get 12-15 actual players so it becomes a difficult judgement call of when to combine while reg is still open and whether to split when 1 or 2 players show up just after. Short starting stacks and fast blinds mean people bust fast.

"final table" doesn't mean squat when you've only had 13 entrants and it's level 3. I'd view it the same as going from 2 tables to 3.

I played in a tourney at FW where they miscounted and broke a table when there were not enough open seats.

So they added an 11th seat to one table (chosen randomly - or maybe not since I was at that table and I cause a bit of trouble wherever I am...). And we played with 11 until a player got eliminated, they balanced, and we were back down to 10 at each table.

It was kind of fun. No big deal. It made me think about whether I should play a little tighter than usual. And its a story to tell...

Pokerstars policy is to have 2 tables if there are n players remaining in an n-max tournament and late reg is still open. Ie 6 people left in 6max tournament in late reg and they split into 2 tables of 3 and combine when late reg closes. This actually is an issue in my home games that often have 5-6 people. I'm really not sure what the purpose here is because it's online so ez pz to break and recombine tables. Also I've even seen in Pokerstars New Jersey where player pools are small this cause a tournament to keep breaking and recombining for no reason. There was a 9max NLHE with 1 hour late reg, 9 players so split into 2 tables, 1 dude busts so combines for 9max with 8 left, 1 new dude late regs taking it back to 9 and the table re-broken. Is this any better than breaking and unbreaking when it goes from 9 to 10? Or maybe writing into the software a policy not to make FT in late reg unless (n-2) or less players remain in an n-max. That seems like the best policy for live too.

This. It shouldn't be up to the players to allow another player in the tournament. If the late-registration time hasn't passed, then you make 2 tables or put him on an alternate list.

It's probably not a very well run tournament though if this is prone to happening. Late registration should probably be earlier. But the rules are what they are.

We will occasionally go 11 at a table for short periods of time. Our tournaments have 1 hour of rebuying along with the same hour of late reg. Often we get players coming in to play right at that time because they want to limit their re-buy exposure. Depending on the dealer supply that sometimes makes it easier to play a couple tables at 11 for a short period of time after the freezeout instead of opening a new table and making 7 players move to it.

I did that once, in a major event. The mistake was that I started going H4H at 12 instead of 11 like usual. When one busted, I stopped action and combined. When I finally figured out what the problem was, all the moving players ended up going back to their previous seats. We were giving out 10 seats to a tournament in Vegas. Yeah....oops. I felt horrible for the bubble.

Speaking of miscounts ... I was in a Satty and it was announced that the bubble had burst due to multiple Players busting simultaneously. By the time they figured it out that they were still 'at' the bubble, not past it, two of the table's Dealers had already started to sort out all the chips at the table for storage ... oops!!

Luckily the Players were all pretty low key and instead of waiting around for the assumed 20-30 minutes of surveillance to recreate the stacks at the two tables 'most' everyone agreed to chip in and pay the bubble enough to cover a seat in the tournament beyond what they would've gotten for the 'pay' bubble.

Lesson learned for the Floor ... There are typically two bubbles in a Satty since the first Player paid usually doesn't win a seat, just some cash. GL