Kenny Hallaert: Late Registration is Too Powerful, Hurts Rec Players
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Imagine you're competing in the Boston Marathon.
The race has been going for over an hour, but you aren't actually on the course yet. Instead, you're waiting at the 13-mile mark. That's where you'll enter, when more than half of the competitors have gotten through. Sure, those runners who have pushed a good pace might be ahead of you for the time being, but you have an edge on them and everyone else by saving all of your energy for the second half of the race.
OK, so unless you're Dara O'Kearney or some other rare breed of poker player used to running very long distances, you're probably still wheezing and walking off the course in something like 30 minutes.
But, still, the principle applies, and according to Kenny Hallaert, that's exactly what's happening in poker tournaments nowadays with extended late registration. As soon as a player goes bust, all of the players who register at that point receive a stack that is worth more than the starting stacks of the players who sat in for the first hand. Expected value-wise, they've effectively already made money.
"You're just making a lot of money by coming in at the very end," Hallaert said. "Basically, if you're laying on the couch scratching your balls all afternoon, you're still gonna make money while the tournament is running."
The Math Behind Late Entries
Hallaert is a man with over $4 million in live cashes, a WSOP Main Event final table under his belt, and the initiator of the popular Las Vegas Summer Poker Tournament Schedule.
It's no surprise that he does plenty of thinking on his game away from the table, and recently he found himself wondering what a player's stack value would be at certain spots in a tournament, particularly a satellite.
Essentially, he wanted to know how much benefit there would be to registering late, if any.
Furthermore, it's a topic in which he's interested as a tournament organizer himself �� Hallaert was one of the most active participants in the recently concluded Tournament Directors Association Summit. How long should he allow late registration and reentry in the events he runs in Europe?
"I always want to create a fair environment for everybody and definitely always take into account the recreational player," he said.
"Basically, if you're laying on the couch scratching your balls all afternoon, you're still gonna make money while the tournament is running"
So, Hallaert attempted to look at some ICM calculators, but the ones he found online only went up to 15 players. Hallaert wanted a view of the bigger picture, so he got a programming-inclined friend to come up with a model to answer a question: when late registration closes, what's the value of a starting stack?
Hallaert published the results on June 23, and they proved to be eye-opening. Here's a snapshot of the results, with the tournaments listed sans rake on the left, followed by the value of a starting stack at maximum late registration and the model's expected profit number:
| Tournament | Value of Starting Stack at End of Reg | Expected Profit (%) |
|---|---|---|
| PokerStars $500 | $581 | $81 (16%) |
| 2018 WSOP $4,650 | $5,117 | $467 (10%) |
| 2019 WSOP $9,400 | $9,844 | $444 (4.7%) |
In some events, players are sitting down with a 16 percent return on investment before they play a single hand just by waiting until the last second to register.
"The money doesn't get added to the prize pool," Hallaert said. "It has to come from somewhere, so it has to come from players already in the tournament."
In the third test case, which Hallaert said came from the $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo event during this year's World Series of Poker, a breakdown is given of the change in value from the stacks that bagged the night before to the same stacks playing with the new entries the next day. In some cases, players had over $100 in equity leak out of their stacks into the ether.
Most poker players wouldn't just light $100 on fire and be happy about it, but little do they know, that's exactly what's happening when opponents are allowed to register late into their events.
Looking Out for the Recreational Player
The whole situation, Hallaert said, serves to chip further away at the recreational player's expected value. Already at a disadvantage relative to the pro, late registration compounds that gap, essentially giving the pro a cheat code.
The players who register late are already usually in a better financial position, Hallaert pointed out. They're better players on average, and they are combining an edge in skill with this built-in edge that comes from registering late.
"Players are constantly looking how to exploit the system and how they can win those couple of extra bucks"
Then, there are issues with scouting tournaments. Pros may show up, especially in a small field, and check out the lay of the land. If the players with heaps are recreational players, the pros can scurry over to the registration desk and hop in. If they are strong pros, no worries. Put the $10K in your pocket and save it for the next one.
Hallaert made it clear he isn't blaming the pros for taking any edge available.
"They're obviously not cheating," he said. "They're just using the system in a way that the recreational player is not aware of. Edges at the top for the professional players are getting very low. Players are constantly looking how to exploit the system and how they can win those couple of extra bucks.
"The amateur player is often not heard enough in general. [They] aren't heard but they are the most vulnerable in a way. So, I'm trying to protect them."
In a perfect world, there wouldn't be any late entries, Hallaert said. Everyone would show up for the start of a tournament, there would be a random draw, and the tournament would play out from there.
But, that's a perfect world, and this world is far from perfect. So, what can be done?
Finding a Middle Ground
Tournaments have financial realities. They need to make money. Tournament directors have bottom lines to show their bosses. Reentries boost prize pools, which help marketing. They bring in more rake for the house.
Hallaert understands that, which is why he's advocating for a middle ground.
"We need to find some sort of consensus without, as organizers, being too greedy," he said. "It needs to be within reason."
"This really hurts the recreational players. We need recreational players."
Being able to register for a 16 percent immediate profit strikes him as far too much. Even 10 percent seems like too much of an edge to give players who already have one. In his opinion, something like half of the field being eliminated, which translates to about a five percent edge, seems sensible. If the tournament uses 10 percent payouts instead of 15 percent, it can be open a bit longer.
WPT Executive Tour Director Matt Savage touched on the topic briefly at the TDA Summit, and he's in the same camp as Hallaert. He sees how late registration remains open at the WSOP, with players sometimes able to register with as few as 10 big blinds in some spots and under 10 big bets in limit.
"It's too late for me," Savage said. "But when they're as successful as they are over there, they're probably not going to want to change anything. That's unfortunate."
While every TD would surely love to boast about the 6,000-entry fields the WSOP is routinely drawing this summer, this short-term thinking can hurt the poker economy. There are other ways to monetize players aside from simply jamming them into an event and recycling them continuously until they're as busted as the old tires ground up and used for foundation in football fields.
For instance, schedule a nightly turbo for shortly after registration ends.
"You have two winners," Hallaert said. "Two people who are happy. More happy stories, which is good for marketing."
Hallaert is calling on his fellows TDs to find a better way forward. Live poker certainly isn't dying, but why not work to build a more optimal ecosystem before real problems crop up down the road? Cutting late registration seems to be low-hanging fruit.
"I think all these organizers, they want to do good for the players," Hallaert said. "This really hurts the recreational players. We need recreational players. They are the base of poker. Without them, there is no poker.
"Hopefully, I wake up some people."
Read Hallaert's full MTT ICM Analysis via Google Docs.
