What’s your take on Late Registration?

I’ve been thinking a lot about late registration in tournaments. Some players say it’s a great way to save time and still enter with a decent stack, while others believe you miss valuable early spots to build chips. Personally, I feel it depends on the structure—fast blinds make it tougher if you join late, but in deep stack events it can still be profitable.

What’s your approach—do you prefer to jump in right away, or wait until later levels?

It depends a lot on the type of tournament, for example in Mystery Bounty nothing would happen, however in a PKO it might be better to be there from the start.

I think if it's a long late reg you're aren't missing much in the early levels,

if it's a turbo obviously you want to get there on time👍

Pros of Late Registration in MTTs​

1. Time efficiency
   • You don’t spend hours grinding the early levels with deep stacks and tiny blinds.
   • You can join closer to the middle stages, where the action is faster.
2. Lower variance
   • Early stages are full of “gamblers” and loose all-ins → higher risk of busting in a cooler.
   • With late reg, you skip a part of this chaos.
3. Edge in average fields
   • If you’re strong at playing short stacks, late entry can give you an advantage.

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⚠️ Cons of Late Registration​

1. Short stack disadvantage
   • You usually enter with 15–25 BB (sometimes less).
   • Very limited maneuverability: mostly push/fold spots.
2. Fewer opportunities to build a stack
   • In early stages, you can double up against weaker players → arriving at late game with a big stack.
   • Late reg denies you this potential.
3. Less information on opponents
   • You haven’t seen how people played earlier → fewer reads and dynamics.

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📊 Conclusion​

• If you’re skilled at short stack play and don’t have much time, late registration can be fine.
• But if your goal is to maximize EV (expected value), starting from level 1 is usually better:
  • more chances to exploit weaker players,
  • better opportunities to build a big stack,
  • more room to apply your skill.

💡 Many pros use a mixed strategy:

• In high buy-in events, they prefer to start from the beginning.
• In lower buy-in tournaments, late reg is sometimes acceptable if they want to reduce grinding hours.

Best strategy to enter in Mystery Bounty MTTs

Not a fan for PKO's, bounty tournaments.

But for regular MTT's, 'IF' you have a strong short stack game, you'll have far less decisions to make & as a result you'll be able to open many more tourneys!

I find it better to hold out unless its a PKO.

amts said:

I’ve been thinking a lot about late registration in tournaments. Some players say it’s a great way to save time and still enter with a decent stack, while others believe you miss valuable early spots to build chips. Personally, I feel it depends on the structure—fast blinds make it tougher if you join late, but in deep stack events it can still be profitable.

What’s your approach—do you prefer to jump in right away, or wait until later levels?

Click to expand...

I usually register before the tournament starts. I like to use all the opportunities available. But there have been situations when I registered 5 minutes before the end and took 1st place. A lot depends on the format and structure, but for me it's obvious that the later you register, the more you have to be prepared to take risks.

Late registration in poker has both advantages and disadvantages. It allows players to save energy, join the game with an already formed stack, which makes the game easier in the early stages, and make more re-entries in tournaments, increasing the prize pool. However, with late registration, the player has a lower ROI, since he misses out on the opportunity to collect bounties (in knockout tournaments) and has more variance due to the short stack.

leoniq888 said:

Pros of Late Registration in MTTs​

Time efficiency

• You don’t spend hours grinding the early levels with deep stacks and tiny blinds.
• You can join closer to the middle stages, where the action is faster.

Click to expand...

This point is valid. If you are a winning player, then skipping the early blind levels allow you to play more tournaments, which can increase your hourly winrate.

leoniq888 said:

Lower variance

• Early stages are full of “gamblers” and loose all-ins → higher risk of busting in a cooler.
• With late reg, you skip a part of this chaos.

Click to expand...

This is false, because entering with a short stack mean, we are much closer to being committed to a pot. So the risk of busting due to some kind of unavoidable spot like running AK into QQ and losing the "flip" is higher not lower. And playing against "gamblers" is hugely profitable, so "avoiding" it is a disadvantage not an advantage. If a gambler put a bad beat on us by beating our AK with J4 offsuit or whatever, we can just reenter the tournament, since hardly any online MTT does not offer this option today.

There is however another advantage of entering late, which you (or your AI tool?) missed, and which is actually fairly important. And this is the fact, that when players bust from a tournament, then the value of each remaining chip goes up due to ICM. So unless its a bounty tournament, players entering late get an ICM-advantage, which is the main reason, some people consider long late registration periods to be unfair and bad for the game. And in that sense you can say, that entering early puts us on a disadvantage, because if we dont play, we gain an easy edge by letting our competitors collide and bust each other.

leoniq888 said:

1. Edge in average fields
   • If you’re strong at playing short stacks, late entry can give you an advantage.

Click to expand...

This is also false, because the average tournament player makes much more substantial mistakes playing with a deep stack, than they do playing with a short stack. So unless we suck at deep stacked play ourselfes, our edge will be highest in the early blind levels, and we give up on this edge by entering late.

martinoni said:

Best strategy to enter in Mystery Bounty MTTs

Click to expand...

Why do you think that?

in freerolls its good to enter as late as possible depending on the starting stack and average stack close to ending off late regestration

leoniq888 said:

Pros of Late Registration in MTTs​

1. Time efficiency
   • You don’t spend hours grinding the early levels with deep stacks and tiny blinds.
   • You can join closer to the middle stages, where the action is faster.
2. Lower variance
   • Early stages are full of “gamblers” and loose all-ins → higher risk of busting in a cooler.
   • With late reg, you skip a part of this chaos.
3. Edge in average fields
   • If you’re strong at playing short stacks, late entry can give you an advantage.

---

⚠️ Cons of Late Registration​

1. Short stack disadvantage
   • You usually enter with 15–25 BB (sometimes less).
   • Very limited maneuverability: mostly push/fold spots.
2. Fewer opportunities to build a stack
   • In early stages, you can double up against weaker players → arriving at late game with a big stack.
   • Late reg denies you this potential.
3. Less information on opponents
   • You haven’t seen how people played earlier → fewer reads and dynamics.

---

📊 Conclusion​

• If you’re skilled at short stack play and don’t have much time, late registration can be fine.
• But if your goal is to maximize EV (expected value), starting from level 1is usually better:
  • more chances to exploit weaker players,
  • better opportunities to build a big stack,
  • more room to apply your skill.

💡 Many pros use a mixed strategy:

• In high buy-in events, they prefer to start from the beginning.
• In lower buy-in tournaments, late reg is sometimes acceptable if they want to reduce grinding hours.

Click to expand...

What a terrible chatGPT slop.

5 mins is good for one the blinds haven't gone up too much and also if you forgot or couldn't get on on time

I like late registration, it saves a lot of time🙂☕

Save time, and avoid a cross or no beat at the start, entering late you know that you have to push from the start to be in the middle of the tournament, now you won't know the players, and if you know how to keep your big stack from the start you can get paid with peace of mind! salutes

I really used to hate the very long late registration in ACR , one of the reasons that I stopped playing there . It lengthens the duration of a tourney a lot , up to 10 hours or more .I Iike short LR and most of the times I preregister .

Lately I've been using it a lot in Mystery Bounty tournaments, at party poker there's one for $5.50 that already enters the Mystery in the MLR.