Author Topic: late entrants starting stacks  (Read 7381 times)

mooredog

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late entrants starting stacks
« on: July 07, 2011, 07:12:01 AM »
In our poker room late tournament entrants usually have a chip deduction to their starting stacks equal to the blinds missed. Some places including the wsop give full stacks to late entrants no matter how late the players enter. Of course the later one enters the harder it is to determine how many blinds are missed (we use a timed formula).  What is the argument for or against late entrants starting with full stacks?

Stuart Murray

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Re: late entrants starting stacks
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2011, 07:19:42 AM »
Hi Mooredog,

I am against reducing stacks for late entries, instead I use an early registration bonus, giving players an additional 10-20% bonus of the starting stack upto the end of registration period.  Late entries then start with the basic starting chips and coupled with the blinds increasing I believe and many others do that this is punishment enough for late entry, especially commercially where we want people playing, even when they arrive late.

My league company does suggest 10% reduction in the first level, 30% reduction in the second level and 50% reduction in the third level, with no entries after the first break period, but I feel this is too harsh.

Regards
Stuart

Brian Vickers

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Re: late entrants starting stacks
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2011, 07:27:58 AM »
I work in a smaller (16 table) card room, and our daily tournaments usually run between 40-60 players.  Since January, we have allowed late entries to start with a full stack of chips regardless of when the player bought in.  Even though it is at a player's disadvantage to come in late (because their relative chip stack is smaller) our players kept showing up later and later, thinking they were at an advantage.  Furthermore, several players complained about the late entrants getting a full stack as well, even when I explained that the average chip stack was higher than their starting stack at the point the late entries came in.
Beginning this Saturday, we will start putting out dead stacks on the table for the first 20 mins.  After 20 mins we will pick up the dead stacks and balance tables (if neccessary).  Late entries will still be allowed until the first break, but they will have the equivilant of 1 BB and 1 SB taken from their stack, put in the dealer's rack, and the dealer will put the equivilant of 1 SB back into the pot at the end of each of the hands until all the removed chips are back in play.  Alternates have their chips penalized at the same rate, and is based on the level they are seated.
The reason we are going to this change, is that when you have 20 players at tournament start and up tp 60 players by the end of registration, it becomes difficult to start the tournament on time, knowing you will need at least 5 tables but only having 20 players seated (5 tables of 4?).  With dead stacks we will be able to start all of our tables on time, as all tables will essentially be 10 handed (for all intents and purposes).  It should encourage our players to show up earlier, which makes the tournament more appealing to those on the fence about buying in or not.  It also still gives players a chance to buy-in for only a slight penalty should they not be abel to avoid being late.

I used dead stacks at my previous card room, and having experienced it both ways, prefer dead stacks for the start of a tournament.  To me it allows more flexibility and ease for late entries.  For events of the size of the WSOP I completely understand giving full stacks, as they have more flexibility in staffing, but this to me is easier for smalll daily fields such as ours.

D.C.

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Re: late entrants starting stacks
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2011, 02:50:48 PM »
Hello guys,

Nowadays in Brazil i seldom direct events with less than 300 players and the BSOP (Brazilian series) averages 700.
From a client satisfaction point of view, we've found that clients are overall happier with a full stack (of course, duh) and it creates just an undesirable increase in workload from our floor staff an dealers to take chips of late entrants stacks.

Also, I think we've come up with a fairly efficient system to the start of our tournaments so that we can start on time with 200 players and have 350 by the end of late registration without having to delay the start of the event.

Assuming we don't reach the room capacity, of course (which would trigger alternate registration).

1 - Every table starts with two seats blocked (10-seat tables) and we start filling all the tables up to 8 players. As soon as we have 6 players at any given table, the game can begin there, so no table will be more than two players shorter than the other.
2 - And so we keep on adding tables and keeping seats 9 and 10 blocked as long as there are people standing in the registration line. If there are about 30 people in line, we add 4 tables, and so on.
3 - As soon as the line begins to clear, I unblock all #9 seats and start filling up those seats.
4 - If all #9 seats get occupied and we have sporadic people arriving we start assigning #10 seats to them.

We have developed a registration software which allows my floormen to walk around with a tablet (iPad or similar) checking the table map and the overall occupancy. They can, then, quickly add an available seat for registration (i.e. free a used seat when a player busts out), block/unblock a seat, etc. or balance players during the first hours of the event not to let a table with only two or three players waiting to fill up.

That way we don't have a problem with too few players during the start of an event and with extra chips in the event from dead stacks that were blinded off but nobody ended up using that seat.

Hope that helps!

All the best,
D.C.
Devanir "D.C." Campos
Brazilian Series of Poker Tournament Director

Luca P.

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Re: late entrants starting stacks
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2011, 04:02:27 AM »
I don't like to put dead stacks on tables for the entries. that's because generally our tournaments doesn't require a pre-registration process, so we doesn't know how many players could come into play. In this way we avoid additional chips into the game.

So I use the folowing easy formula:
-pre-registration at tournament needed: full stack at the tables withchips deduction from the dealer.
-pre-registration at tournament not needed: chip deduction from stack.

Chips deduction from stack is calculated per hourly-hand distributed rate, 30 hands per hour ca.

Card Room Manager

Alea Casino
108 Upper Parliament Street
Nottingham
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Tel 0115 871 7288

Spence

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Re: late entrants starting stacks
« Reply #5 on: September 01, 2011, 10:39:29 PM »
In our annual events we would take alternates if the event was sold out. If we capped the tournament at 550 players we would add players to the table as soon as players were eliminated. This was only for new players and was not a rebuy. As well we would only sell up to the first break. There were times where we would end up with nearly 600 players. We always gave a full chip stack to these participants. Seeing as they were not late entries but we oversold entries who did not have a chance to get into the tournament yet and were going in at a disadvantage (Avg. stack would be higher) we thought it only fair to give them a complete starting stack.