Late Registration Question

I see quite a bit of players seem to do this. First off, in general is late regging tournaments a good idea? i always thought it was a bad idea b/c if even i'm late regging a tournament thats 30 minutes... then well i miss out on the early blind levels in case I could double up.


However, I read that lot of people mention early levels are useless because everyone usually plays very tight so nothing pretty much happens. I heard that if you play a tight game, then playing in the early levels is pretty useless. But if you play loose, then its different because you could build a stack early on. I agree with the loose part, but isn't playing tight pretty good as well because there are bad players that would spew or play big pots with not so good hands early on and you can double up on them?


I also heard late registering helps out with hourly. That makes sense assuming you late reg a tournament 1 hour later, well the same player who is playing tight could just have the same size stack or similar as you. However, how late is too late for late registration? I assume most of you would late reg all the way till 50bb or so and anything less than that is not worth it? What about for turbo mtt? I would say you should never late reg a turbo mtt right? Or 15 minutes late reg at the worst?


However what about those players who are very good short-mid stackers? Wouldn't players like that enter with 20bb and thats still fine? Issue with this though is they coming in with 20bb whereas many others have 50bb plus stacks.


However for those really deep stack tournaments where you start 250bb or more... would you say the early levels is a waste of time since nothing much pretty happens? I know there are some tournaments that start out with 500bb which is of course ridiculous. So when do pots really start mattering then? I would say 100bb? Assuming 2 competent players... no one is going to play a 500bb pot without a huge monster.


Would like if someone can give quick summary on this for late registration.

All depends about your play. I obv prefer register on all mtts on the begining but if some started i late registrated,obv make a late registration on mtt normal generate less oportunity cost than on mtt hyper.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both, by registering early you can get while the blinds are low and easily see more flops opposed to later on, also some of the weaker players might be there early on, while later they will be gone. By registering late you can skip a lot of the field and get yourself closer to the money, but put yourself in a frantic position to gain chips.

If you are a good post flop player, then you shouldn´t register late, and vice versa for a good push fold player.
I personally hate the long late registering times, but i´m not a loose or a good postflop player, so i tend now to register later...

I play on Americas Cardroom, where they typically allow 2-3 hours of late registration. I find that I do a lot better when I register at the 50/100 level with 10 ante, because I can play either loose or tight , and my decisions become easier. Starting with 50 bbs gives plenty of time to be patient and cuts down on a lot of the wide range of crap that people tend to play when the blinds are extremely low. If you are comfortable playing loose preflop for high implied odds register early. If you're more comfortable playing tight patient poker register late. Just my opinion

I don't think that it's wise to latereg into NL Texas Hold'em MTTs in general. You lose some value if you do vs. bad players and usually bad recs bust out quickly -> field is harder when you latereg. Also there's two-edged sword if you come to table where everyone else has some knowledge how other players play, but you don't.

However, I usually latereg into rebuys which give more chips when you purchase add-on. That way lateregging has two merits that usually wins the downsides: 1) you get more chips for same money and 2) you don't have to play that long.

I am with the majority of people on here that reg'ing early is the way to go. It gives you a much better opportunity to see many flops and run up a stack before registration ends as well as take advantage of any fish at the table who will likely be dying to gift their stack away :). However, if the only game you know how to play is push-fold poker, then buying in with a stack of ~10bb might be a solid option!

I'd rather be in a tournament from the start tbh gives me more hands and more chances to get the double up I need early on, other than that I just sit tight and wait for monsters in good position for the first stage of the tournament