Is Arriving Late to a Tournament a Good or Bad Idea?
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We've seen a lot of players take advantage of the late registration period in today's Main Event. Are these players just being "fashionably late," or is there some strategic purpose for skipping early levels? If there is a strategy, what exactly is it?
Late last year, poker pro Daniel Negreanu and Shaun Deeb had a long debate about the advantages and disadvantages of showing up later to a poker tournament. PokerNews' Martin Harris wrote a piece for Learn.PokerNews.com which examined the subject. Here's an excerpt from the article:
"Most new players are likely going to try a no-limit hold'em tournament when just starting out, and probably an inexpensive one, too. Low buy-in NLHE tourneys both live and online generally feature "fast" structures — that is, short levels and blinds/antes that increase quickly — which means getting into the game late is probably a bad idea in most cases. In fact, if you do decide to be like Phil Hellmuth and arrive late to a typical low buy-in live tournament, you'll discover the blinds and antes are already big enough to put you in danger with your starting stack.
Say you're playing a $60 NLHE tournament that features 15-minute levels in which you start with 6,000 chips, and that late registration lasts for an hour, meaning you can join the tournament as late as the start of Level 5.
Blinds for Level 1 are 25/50, meaning you have 120 big blinds in your stack if you're there for the first hands. But by Level 5 the blinds are 200/400, meaning if you only start then, you'll be down to just 15 big blinds for your first hand!
Even experienced players would prefer not to start a tournament with such a handicap, never mind those who are relatively new to tournament poker. The fact is, when we see Hellmuth waltzing in four hours late to the WSOP Main Event, he knows the structure is so slow there (with two-hour levels and super deep stacks) the difference between starting at noon or 4 p.m. is relatively minor."
Read the full piece at Learn.PokerNews.com.