Reentry Tournaments

matt-savage-debating-reentry-tournamentsAfter reading an article from well known tournament director Matt Savage (pictured left) last week I decided to make my latest blog post a discussion about reentry tournaments. Like them or loath them reentry tournaments are a huge part of the modern day tournament scene. In the past few years the number of reentry tournaments have grown exponentially and it now seems like the majority of tournaments are of a reentry format.

In my opinion they are in general bad for the game and are unsustainable long term. I’d like to make it clear that I’m not talking about the huge 100k’s that have become the norm over the past 5 years as I think that actually helps to provide some value in these tourneys (from the rich businessman who can readily afford to reload) but events such as the World Poker Tour, which I played in Montreal last week.

WPT Montreal is a $3850 reentry event with three separate starting days. In theory you could be in for $11,400 when the minimum cash is only $5204. In fact if you played all three bullets in this tournament you would need to make the top 5 percentile of the tournament (45th place out of 862 entries.) This means that in a reentry tournament there are very few winners. However, in a freezeout tournament with no reentrys, normally around 15% of the field make the money and are all guaranteed to be ‘winners.’ Not big winners of course but especially for recreational players coming back with more money than you started with is seen as a big thing.

Another important issue with reentry tournaments is that they cater for the pro players and allow them to have an unfair advantage over the recreational players as the pros generally have bigger bankrolls or backers which allow them the luxury of playing the event multiple times if necessary, whereas the recreational player might only have played the event because they won a satellite.

playground-poker-club-wpt-event-largeWPT Montreal only managed 862 entrants this year compared to 1173 last year. The buy in for the event did increase by $550 overall but I find it highly unlikely this had that big of an impact on the field size. Also I found it to be one of the most well run events and the players were incredibly well looked after by the Playground Casino so I don’t think the loss of 311 entrants was down to negative experiences of last year’s event. I believe that the loss in players was to less satellite winners, as they didn’t want to play one bullet where their opponents would be able to take advantage of up to three bullets.

The reentry format means pros can effectively gamble with their first couple of bullets in order to try and build a huge stack which they will be able to use to their advantage later in the tournament. It also takes out a lot of the ‘pureness’ of the game. For example, it would be silly to put Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey all in for their tournament life as a bluff on day 1a when you know they can easily rebuy and the money means very little to them, whereas in a freezeout tournament it would be much more of a feasible option as you know they are unlikely to want to bust such a big event early.

Reentry tournaments also threaten the longevity of the live poker scene because the best players are more likely than ever to rise to the top in these formats (see Seminole hard rock example later in the post.) What chance does your random live satellite winner stand with 1 bullet against pokers elite with three or sometimes even more opportunities in the same tournament? Even if they are fortunate enough to make it into the money they are likely to be surrounded by pokers biggest sharks when the serious money becomes involved rather than in a non-rebuy format where the mixture of players would be of a much greater spectrum. Although we are yet to fully see the effects of this in the live poker scene we can look to the Full Tilt Poker model before Black Friday of their reentry tournaments to see the likely results of reentry tournaments long term. Even though they were only widely ran for a 6 month period many players went bust or went on a significant downswing during this period with the only real winners being the people who were fortunate to hit a huge score in one of them or the elite regs who are the only players this tournament format really benefits.

Reentry tournaments are not all bad, though. Without them the guaranteed prize pools would be nowhere near as large in these events, which in turn would mean that a lot fewer players would make the effort to travel which then decreases the field size and prize pool further. For example, if WPT Montreal was a $3850 freezeout it really wouldn’t be worth it for a lot of people to travel to play when you consider the expenses with flight and accommodation costs.

What I am proposing in these cases is perhaps increasing the buy in amounts in certain events and making them freeeouts instead, which will make it more of a level playing field once again. At the WSOP they used to have $1k rebuy events but they got abolished because they didn’t want people to be able to ‘buy’ bracelets. In a way rebuy tournaments are similar to reentry tournaments so I really hope that the WSOP doesn’t start to introduce them to the most prestigious series of all because that could be very damaging indeed.

Besides WPT Montreal, one of the more recent live tournaments that I played in was the Seminole Hard Rock $5k reentry in Florida in August. Without the reentry format there is no way that it could have got anywhere near the $10 million guarantee they offered. I for one wouldn’t have made the long journey without that guarantee and the chance of multiple bullets if I busted out early.

Overall the tournament proved to be a major success and looks like it will be having a permanent place for poker players on the tour in the future. The long-term problems of reentry tournaments are highlighted in the final results of this tournament, though, with two of the best players in the field, Blair Hinkle and Justin Bonomo, ending up heads-up. It was a case of fifth time is the lucky charm for Justin as he had already managed to bust the tournament four times over the previous two days of reentry. A number of other pros with deep pockets also made it deep in this tournament, which highlights the fact of how much of an advantage it is to have a big bankroll for the reentry format of tournaments.

I am not arguing for reentry tournaments to be abolished in the live poker tournament scene but I think it is essential that they are monitored and don’t keep increasing at the rate they have over the past few years. In the end, if the poker rooms and casinos keep seeing doubled prize pools and rake, what is going to stop them from making every tournament a reentry?

23 thoughts on “Reentry Tournaments”

  1. interesting read Chris. Not sure I agree with all of it, maybe the UK events haven’t suffered from pros taking 4 bullets or whatever as much, certainly seems to me more rich recs doing that, but can see if it went too far it wouldn’t be ideal

  2. I enjoyed reading your article although I’m not sure all your points are accurate. I’m pretty sure they ended re buys at wsop because the employees were stealing and it was hard to regulate even though they may have said it was because they didn’t want players to be able to buy a bracelet. The only real advantages that I can see for players who re enter many times is that they know they can put more pressure on the players who are not going to re buy and that they don’t have to have to wait a long period of time or pay the extra travel expenses for the next good big buy in tournament.

  3. “it would be silly to put Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey all in for their tournament life as a bluff”

    Of course it would be silly. In order for you to put someone else all in, you would need to go to his seat, and move his stack into the pot, which is not allowed.

  4. Wouldn’t one aspect to look at in rebuy tournaments be then the satellite structure? Most still operate on the old model of you win a seat. Maybe for rebuy tournament some or all satellites could shift to winning additional bullets if you say make top XX. It lowers the amount of people winning seats but gives reason to play down and creates new and interesting bubbles in the payouts.

  5. Even though I don’t really like re-entry tournaments I found your reasoning contradictory. Earlier in the article you argue how tough it is to make up for multiple re-entries and then later on you state its an advantage… which is it? In reality, I don’t think it is either, your expectation is the same on each buy in unless you’re gambling on your first (which just means your expectation is less). So I agree with you that re-entry tournament are bad, but for one reason only… They increase the ratio of good players to fish in any tournaments and make it much less likely a fish will win.

    1. The fish you all talk about, could eventually be the next Ivey or Daniel. No one starts out being a professional, their skills are developed and learned (most often be practice). The lack of being able to reenter because of your bankroll is a huge disadvantage to becoming a better player. Much better to play the professionals in a freeze-out, you can learn so much more from their play with this format!

      1. I didn’t mean to be derogatory towards less-experienced or losing players by calling them fish, my bad. I just meant that re-entry tournaments are worse for losing players because the ratio of pro:amateur goes up. It also leads to smaller roi’s and higher variance overall for professionals. Basically I’m in violent agreement w/ Chris, I just think he didn’t touch on what I consider to be the more valid arguments against them.

      2. And actually now that I reread I see that he kind of does touch on that point… So again my bad.

    2. also a contradiction why did FTP regs reentering cause them to go broke (or do you mean to say the amateurs went broke) if its an? And .. data please! or is this your feelings …

  6. On WSOPcom, all of the guaranteed events are re-buys with the exception of the Sunday $15,000 which has a buy-in of $200+15.

    I think this will tend to kill online poker by bleeding the money from the recreational players and will reduce the player pool to regs and pros.

    Chris, thank you for sharing your views.

  7. I am an weekender mtt player that wins enough to pay for gas(150% roi, $100 abi, 25% itm). Gas is $12

  8. and the travel time involved means i would play less if rebuys weren’t allowed. I appreciate reenter format as LAGs tend to go bust while I, not the PRO, chips up. It inflates the prize pool. Regarding regionals, travel money is more important to amateurs and you don’t include that in your analysis. Finally, if re-entry MTTs pose an advantage to well rolled pros, why did so many go bust when FTP rolled out reentrys? Did the one bullet people go bust?

  9. Why is it the tournament’s fault of people re-enter and go broke? To me, it is simply money management. I’m not a big time poker player, in fact, my bankroll is less then 1k most of the time, I go into re-entry tournaments with a plan on how much I’m willing to spend.

    It sounds like on if your arguments is that the casino should control how much money the player should spend. No thank you, we have enough folks telling us what to do.

    Great article even though we don’t agree.

  10. As a recreational player I agree 100% with your article Chris. I have a good disposable income, but both online and live, I have no interest in playing MTT’s where anyone can rebuy multiple times. From a playing standpoint it encourages reckless and donkish play by people trying to quickly build huge stacks (or bust). Sure, I realize that from hand to hand that is +EV for the rest of the players, but eventually those guys are going to hit a couple double ups and build a huge stack with no concern for how many bullets they are firing. I could be card dead for an hour and by the time I get a few hands to play I’m probably not going to be able to compete with their stacks. Sorry, as a rec player I’m sticking with freezeout MTT’s. I’m not learning the game and getting better by trying to donk my way to a big stack or firing multiple bullets with little chance of recouping that with a min cash. You hit the nail on the head. The question is are the big tournaments and sites like Stars more interested in catering to rec fish like me or High Stakes Pro’s. I’d say the latter from what I can see in the last couple years.

  11. I know I’m late to the party, but have your thoughts on re-entry tournaments changed since you wrote this back in 2013?

    Nonetheless, this article is spot on with my thinking.

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