If you're there for fun then which part is the fun part? The socialising? Or are you saying you get your fun from playing more streets? I imagine a lot of recs like the fun of having a lot more all ins.

Why would one play a game that they're destined to lose, or one that has no reward whatsoever for winning? Winning is fun. Otherwise you're just doing a random activity for no purpose whatsoever when you're playing a game. I suppose that there are masochists/degens out there that enjoy just screwing around or lighting money on fire but in my experience, most fish want to win and enjoy it when they do, it just doesn't happen much for them. So since we're all adults here and we should be able to handle the realities of winners and losers in the game because we aren't children, what's the harm in telling to people to put the work in if they want to win? And as the other guy alluded to, short stack play is a huge part of tournaments whether there's a significant amount of late reg and re-entries or not, so I'm not sure how late reg is solely to blame for that either.

Recreational players like having deeper stack play in tournaments, whether this is actually to their financial benefit or not.

This is why every tournament nowadays advertises itself as "deep stack" and tournaments keep doubling and tripling the number of starting chip to look like they have more play, even when the actual structure doesn't reflect this.

Pros probably like deeper stacks too, all other things being equal. But when registration is left open close to bubble, in many cases the ICM advantage of registering at the last moment will be greater than the skill advantage of playing deep stacked at the start of the tournament.

The only parties that really likes short stacks are the casinos (since it maximizes entries for the lowest costs) and "pros" who aren't actually good at poker, but are good at memorizing charts.

First of all, the problem is the term rec is very poorly defined, and captures a broad class of people who like different things. People are saying "recs like this" or "recs hate that", but they don't have hard evidence, and the truth is probably that recs are different people with different motivations and different opinions. Some recs treat poker like a roulette wheel and want to gamble it up, some recs treat poker like a chess match and want to outthink their opponent. So we can't oversimplify things.

Similarly, it's not as simple as recs hate it and pros like it. Obviously a lot of pros like late, late reg but also obviously some pros dislike it. So pros have a variety of opinions too. This is not recs vs pros.

If rec means "someone with a full time job not in poker who plays for fun", that includes me. I can speak for myself, poker is a strategy game, some people find that fun. Same reason that people find Chess, Go, Bridge, and Starcraft fun. And playing a bit deeper is more strategic and more fun. The fun part is being faced with genuinely interesting decisions you have to use your brain to think about, not checking whether I should call a SB 15BB rejam with pocket fours from some Nash chart.

People keep saying "stop complaining and learn the push/fold charts". What they're missing is that, some of us know the charts plenty well, we just don't think push/fold poker is especially fun. Tournaments are short stacked, but there's a huge, huge difference between 15BB and 40BB. Yes, these days there are solvers that give you some equilibrium strategies for 40BB, but things like hand reading, intuition, and analysis play a much much bigger role at 40BB decisions than 15BB decisions.

I'm actually a bit shocked that I have to explain this, to me it's obvious, that some people enjoy straetgy games. Some people are purely in it for the gamble, and people are purely in it for the money, but honestly if you just want to gamble the house games make more sense, and if you just want money a real job makes a lot more sense. So to me genuinely enjoying the strategy game aspect of poker is the best reason to play it, so it's bizarre it's getting sidelined as some niche reason to enjoy it.

The other reason why pros late reg is for hourly rate reasons, basically the early stage edge is not worth their time. Better to relax or play cash. Even if you think everyone else is solid at 20BB rejam game, if you late reg as 20BB, you might be thinking, this tournament is not worth my time unless I FT it, so I'll just see if I can luckbox 20BB into a real stack and go from there already reasonably deep.

Unfortunately that attitude hurts the hourly rate of everyone else who now has to play longer days as short stacks keep popping up like cockroaches and rejamming left and right.

If there was some simple rule of thumb, like no late reg for less than 40BB I'd be fine with it.

You might be imagining wrong on the recs like allins as a fun thing. I certainly don't in general. What is not fun is having to fold to all the jams almost every time. Fun for me is the shot of a good payday coupled with being able to play poker over many hours and seeing a variety of situations.

Sure, we like allins when we have the nuts, but how often does that actually happen? I am extremely careful of spots like this and would prefer not to have to make decisions affecting my entire tournament life every hand. I think there is a difference in the social aspect between cash and tournaments. My experience with both would say they are two completely different animals. Virtually everyone who enters a tournament wants to win and would like to think they have a chance to do so. Tournaments today do not offer this as a possibility as much as they did in the past because it is harder to go deep than it was in the past when you have unlimited reentries and late late reg when you are only playing one bullet.

It’s true that if you ask recreational players what they like about poker, they will give you a lot of different answers. But I’m pretty certain that memorizing ICM push/fold charts will not be among those answers.

What if they guaranteed that the money bubble wouldn't be reached until x levels after late registration ends? Maybe late registration is through level 8 and you don't pay out until level 16, so if you normally pay 10% of the field, when more than 10% of the field is still there after level 16 you just play down to 10%, but if you get less than 10% left in level and you just finished level 15, you keep playing until you get to the end of level 16 and adjust the payouts to however many players you have left.

To mitigate the effects of stalling, maybe you go hand for hand when under 10% and not at the end of level 16, and at the end of 16, you make that the bubble, so the next elimination puts players in the money.

The idea is that people are offended by the idea of there being a short gap between the end of late registration and being ITM, so you force players to be at the table for a certain amount of time before they can cash, even if they register at the very last minute.

I've always felt "deep stack" tournaments were a joke. So what if you have a lot of chips in the beginning. (I guess recreational players think it's cool.) It's in the middle and toward the end of the tournament that you want a lot of chips--and more time.

The last tournament I played in everyone started with 300 big blinds. When push came to shove the big stacks had 15-20 or maybe 25 big blinds. What's wrong with this picture?

Start the tournament with 10 or 15-minute rounds and encourage more gambling early on and add more time as the tournament progresses. As the stacks start to compress introduce more skill. (Or as much as you can.)

I feel similar to what crane says. What is the point of having deep stack tournaments with big stacks early on when chips are not worth much early on? Its like the double ups you want are the ones in the middle and late stages of the tournament when it really matters. I mean if you have a 200bb stack early on and lose a 200bb pot, you still have 100bb... which is a huge stack early on. Yet later on, you lose a 30bb pot, you are either out or almost out when its the mid or late stages of the mtt.


But do ppl notice this more in live mtt or online mtt? I mean if you play online, stars isn't that bad with late reg. I know wpn is ridiculous where all their mtt seem to be minimum 3 hour late reg... then you got those that are 5 hour late reg.


I give an example of tournaments on 888 poker that i posted in the other thread.


Does anyone here dislike 888 mtt structure? First off, it takes way too long to be itm. But not only that, the late reg is 3 hour long or more. Also, you start out so deep stack where chips don't mean much early on. I mean if you double up your stack from 50k to 100k, sure you have doubled your stack. But then when near late reg closes, you have players late reg it with like 20bb or even 10bb. Then if they double up once, they are close to the average stack almost.


But the bigger issue seem to be... when its close to the money, the play is very slow. But not only that, because of that, the avg stack when its near the bubble is like 25bb or less. I seen many tournaments where right after the bubble burst, the avg stack size is 15bb. Does anyone here find this ridiculous and not like it? Once the bubble burst, then players go out very fast. But the issue is its like once its close to the bubble and after it, its like a turbo tournament.


Does anyone agree 888 need to either close late reg early or make the play early on meaningful? I mean you start out so deep stack... even if you double your stack twice to like 200k when late reg is closing, someone can just late reg 20bb or 10bb... they double up once or twice... they have the same stack size as the same player playing from the start. Look at stars and party. Much quicker to be itm and avg stack isn't something ridiculous once its around the bubble. Does anyone know why so many regulars seem to play 888 mtt? I dont know why anyone would be in favor of their tournaments. I mean if you start out so deepstack and lot of play early on, shouldn't avg stack be around 30bb minimum at least when its close to bubble time?


I mean who is even in favor of deep stack tournaments when avg stack is like 25bb or less when its bubble etc.

Nobody here is talking about deep stack. I agree if a tournament starts with more than 150 just go get breakfast. It’s when average stack is 40BB and you pump in a bunch of 10-15BB stacks it changes the dynamic significantly.

I'm not a big MTT player but occasionally will jump in every now and then.
Question I have is how long is too long to late register??
I get the whole idea, regarding the issue with some people not being able to actually be there at the tourneys start time. But 3+ hrs. after it begins??
Why? Why does there need to be such a long reg. period. Aside for the fact the site wants as much money as they can get.
Also I find it a bit daunting registering 3 hrs after a start and the chip leader has 100x buy-in already?
Am I looking at this the wrong way?

I find it funny that for ACRs largest guaranteed morning prize pool, they guarantee 750 entries. How many are signed up on time? Like 20-30 people. The rest of the field comes from late buyins and re-entries.

GTO has to be for everyone to just open shove and not re-enter, right? I think it's a bad format, but as long as they aren't getting angle shot and they meet those guarantees, I'm sure they're looked at as a big success.

If you're confident and willing to fire 2 or 3 bullets to try and chip up, registering in the last 4 or 5 minutes can be very +EV. Just dont be one of those losers that reg last minute and then try to stall to a min cash.