Some poker players contemplate whether or not it would be advantageous to purposely take advantage of the format offered in late registration poker tournaments. In other words, they consider the benefits of registering late for these tourneys rather than buying in on time.

Benefits and Drawbacks to registering Late

As for the perks to registering late for a tournament, you avoid losing a portion (or all) of your stack in the early going, and the tourney field will be reduced when you enter the event. The latter is quite significant because it means that you’re closer to cashing.

However, you also have to consider the downside to this strategy for late registration poker tournaments. The glaringly obvious problem here is that you’re going to be starting off with a much smaller stack than the average player in the field. For example, let’s say that late registration ends one hour after a tournament; by this point, the average chip stack could be 2,250 while yours is just 1,500 chips. Now this isn’t impossible to overcome for most players, but it’s a handicap that you don’t want to deal with.

Simply put, the benefit of starting with a smaller field size doesn’t outweigh the difficulty in having to begin your tournament run with less chips than the average player. By starting late registration poker tournaments on time, you ensure that you’ll have a fighting chance of building your stack throughout the first couple of blind levels.

When you should register Late

Of course, this isn’t to say that you should never register late for a tournament. After all, the point of late registration poker tournaments is to help out those who can’t get into a tourney on time. So if there’s an event that you can’t make on time but really want to play in, go ahead and register late. Just make sure that you’re not doing it on purpose!