Crazy late reg schemes to try to build as big a prizepool has become a serious problem. This is horrible for the poker economy, pushing recreational players to keep reentering mtts when they are super short. Recs only have so much of a monthly budget to put towards poker. They will certainly feel disenchanted when they begin blowing through their rolls quickly during late reg, all the while wondering how they didn't cash. Variance is crazy regging with just 5-8 big blinds. This all contributes to the whole "poker is rigged" mindset prevalent amongst recs.

The latest change, 14 levels, starting stack 5k, at lvl 14 one is entering with 5 big blinds. (I thought this must have been an error when this format first appeared so I contacted support) Nope, it was legitimate.

Mike, please convey to management we want shorter registration periods with more big blinds available during the last level of late reg.

@betonlinemike Please listen to this bro, and contact your people.

Yeah i've seen some end LR with a only 5bb's and pretty much ITM when LR ends...I dunno if it's a deal breaker, I don't want Tourneys longer, but shorten the LR, Copying WPN is a bad idea with these Long LR even in turbos. I really don't think blind levels should go past 10BB's for LR.

I am all for variety, add long and short. As someone who plays OSS on WPN, it's just a burn out and gets quite boring playing 5 Hr LR. I don't think even big ones should be more than 2 hours. I would like to see 1 HR or less.

As for how bad it is for recs...i dunno, they keep rebuying after they punt anyways.

I understand your frustration and will forward these ideas to the correct department. I personally never liked it, but also I loved the odd time I would buy-in with 5 bbs and win the tourney.

I would love some more thoughts from the forum on this matter?

Kind Regards

Mike

I don't have any issues with very long late reg. If someone wants to pay the same price for a 5bb stack that I paid for a 500bb stack, that's good for me.

The issue is that in some of the tournaments the player buying in late are stealing money from all the people who registered earlier because they are so close to the money when late reg is closing. A few days ago I played a tournament that had 26 people left when latereg closed and paid 20. Anyone still in the tournament at that point gets screwed so massively by someone lateregging and stalling. Hope that the network is willing to reconsider even if it is giving a short term boost to the numbers and making a formula that either closes latereg earlier or makes the mincash significantly bigger.

Please help me understand that logic. Wouldn't making the min-cash significantly bigger incentive more late-regging as well as take away money from the players who most often put in the most amount of work to run deep?

The bigger you make the min cash the less people you end up paying. So in the example above if it's a tournament with 25 people left and paying 20 usually it would pay somewhere between 0.8-1.5x Buy-ins for busting out in 25th. Compare that to the same tournament closing late registration at the same time but now paying for example 10 people and having the mincash be 3x the buy-in. In that case the value of registring last second goes down significantly. The easiest way to think about it is imagining you could register one spot off the money, you would never want to register from the beginning when the chance of cashing by being the last person in is so high.

You can read more about the effects of too long late registration here:
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2019/...OMJx8KJnNzamxQ

I read the pokernews article, then read the full report in the google docs. It all makes so much sense, now I feel bad for being so ignorant on the topic for so long. Thanks for the knowledge.

For me, it's all fine and dandy when you are running hot and spamming rebuys just so you can get it in bad and win a flip. Conversely, when you build a stack over 3 hours, then the aforementioned happens it makes you think about the legitimacy of the setup.
Believe you me or not, but I understand tournament poker and variance, but this is the same exact problem, which ACR had (and still has), but was more prominent before they cracked down on the eastern euro bot/cheating groups. What happens is - just as others have alluded to or even come straight out and say they are doing it - people, individually or collectively, will late reg and then all max time bank every time.
Of course, this is common practice on bubbles, yet the problem comes from the fact the late reg being so close to the money encourages entire player groups (whether they be colluders or not) to come in late and stall together. This in turn, dramatically increases variances and for big stacks it may be fine. But also consider the fact that BOL structures are not as good as ACR's or other ROW sites, so as the tournament progresses they tend to play more as turbos than regular mtts. Inherently they add more variance and now we encouraging people to tank ad nauseam. Then as the BB goes up, your big stack of 50bb now turns into 30>20 in like 1.5 lvls, you lose a flip to a 2bb stack and boom you're now 15bb.
It's an unnecessary, added variable to variance. And as I said, it's great when you're sun running. Who cares right?


fwiw @BetonlineMike the fix is to create larger starting stacks, go back to a better structure (like the $215 re-entry 40k that ran last year) and then late reg can be just as long. This way the mtts don't turn into turbos or hyper turbos near money bubbles.

Yeah, I understood mement_mori after he explained it. Since he didn't mention reducing places paid in the initial post, and only mentioned making the min-cash bigger, I assumed he was asking to make all payouts flatter, which didn't make sense to me with what the goal should be, which is why I was confused and asked the question.

I obviously agree that late reg should not end close enough to the bubble so that you can hop in last minute and just stall your way to the money.

I do recall this very issue being brought up about a team of players abusing a loophole that allowed them to all be sat at the same table at the end of late reg and then stalling their way into the money.

Yes, exactly. I remember sitting at the tables with them on WPN when this was going on and no joke 15-20 ppl off of money bubbles in the $22 they would all be max time banking and this would just a few hands would take 10-15 minutes. BOL doesn't have the same problem because time banks are likely way too short (which prly helps in this situation, but its the only time it does), but it does allow for you to see far reaches of variance, which would never happen if structures were better.

No mtt's last level should never have fewer than 10 big blinds ever.

• The "Deep" mtt with 11 levels and 5k starting stack is a good structure. It should never have more levels.
  
• The "Mega" should be capped at 12 levels as it was originally introduced.
  
• The Monster, double the starting stack. 20k, last level 1k/2k. (this should be a rare mtt)
  
• Rebuys, love the 8 level 3k/3k/5k structure, starting half past the hour where late reg ends on break.
  
• Keep all late reg under 2 hours with exception of the few selectively promoted tourneys.

agree with all of this. I'm not playing anything longer than 12 levels or two hours

my name is YesIdPoker on BetOnline. last 2 months it feels like when im playing....that im running my head into a ****ing brick wall...instead of just winning money like usual. i see there are talks of bots on here and talks of the late reg affecting things. i guess i just wanted to say that yea **** obviously sucks on there right now and if there is anything shitty going on like bot rings i would hope that betonline would do something to eliminate that from the game.

Just wanted to add that new player "Awfx" ....he just started playing on there 3 months ago. he's winning money but ive seen him sometimes sitting out from games. also sometimes i have seen him jam over 100 big blinds. like some dude open limps the cutoff 100 bigs and he jams 100 bigs on his button. just really weird dumb ****. maybe its the bot malfunctioning. idk...it could be possible hes just a bad player but....ive played with him a lot and 99% of the time he plays good. but sometimes i see him sitting out, other times overbet jamming 100 bigs.

The problem I have with the LR is just the grind factor, I've been playing poker for many years, It just gets old to play tourneys that last 10-12 hours on some sites.
Like I said many times, I don't mind variety, even if i don't like it. It's just this trend of longer LR and bigger prize pools.

I for one don't like big entry prize pools, other than to try and bink a big score. It's not where I make money. It's annoying to have 50-100 player pool with 2 hr LR or more, grinding for hours only to min cash to a fish suck out.
I do it all the time on WPN.

As far as people buying in late, it goes both ways. It is frustrating to build a stack and have someone come in at the end. Shove 5-20bbs and you have no idea where you are. On the other hand, if you can run pure, it is a HUGE boost to your stack.

The question is, how can you stop it? No matter what point you stop LR, someone will come in and jam with the chance of sucking you out. Some people play only to do that. In the long run, I think it helps good players for people to buy in late and jam. I have built big stacks that way, and also lost big stacks to it.

Where have all the bounty tourneys gone??? They were fun to play and good money. Still some around, but not much under $20 Most are $1-$2 now.
The Pot Luck KO series was fun to play, including the 6+ bounty.

Oh yea for sure @Windpspro
I, too, don't like the 5hr late reg WPN does (even tho they lie and it is like 5hrs 45mins) or anything that approaches that.

Before they started changing the tourney structures towards the end of last year BOL ran tournaments w a max late reg of 2 hrs and if i remember correctly it were only for the Sunday main and like one or two others. These ran great and always crushed the GTD because of rebuys and addons. However, since they started adding a bunch of re-entries they no longer have the luxury of getting money to make up for the GTD through rebuys and addons.

My main thing is what the post at the top says, in that having re-entries w 5bb is ridiculous. They clearly are having it like that to meet the GTD, but as a player it just shifts the balance between skill and variance.

One other thing of note is that BOL's main prerogative is to make its players happy and the main group of people that make up the players are recreationals. So if they are buying into mtts and have a greater shot (i.e. with increased variance) then that is fine by them.

all the guys that are putting in 4+ bullets in 100 person fields are pure dumping money and im 100% in favor of letting them fire away. i think of it as a sort of overlay. like in the 33s during the last level theres always 10-15 poor souls adding money to the prizepool and/or having 6 bbs when late reg ends, god bless them

can we talk bout making a better PKO schedule? bigger gtds and bigger buy ins...some sat/sun majors ? any reason betonline has not made any changes with these its way overdue imo

+10000...been asking this question for forever now. Their mtt director needs to wake up!

Would love to see a progressive KO or some faster structured tournaments on Sunday from 6-8pm est. Seems like there’s a big void there right now. Like that they added a 25K gtd, 55 buy in at 6.

I've looked around a little but can't find any answers. Does BOL publish any list of the payout breakdowns for their tourneys? It seems like the amount of the player pool paid changes by the type of tourney but I would like to know for sure what the payout structure is for their tourneys?

Any help? Thanks

can we please get some better PKOS added to the schedule, why not any 9max??????????

who bot in MTT you think?