Is there any definitive answer for when is best to enter a tournament?

What I have heard is that entering late increases your hourly win rate. It wouldn't increase your overall win rate because there are advantages to entering very early (like before it starts).

What I have found is that when you enter early in a tournament the weak players are all still there. The later you enter, the fewer bad players will be left and those that are left will likely have lower than average stacks.

The other thing that doesn't get mentioned much is that hyper aggro players will tend to gamble a lot early on. They will get it all in as bluffs or will call all ins with draws because they may be getting the right price (or close to the right price) even though they have much less than 50% chance of surviving. They don't care if they win or not because they will be buying back in if they bust out. So I choose to gamble with them.

The last thing I will mention is that it matters profoundly how a room deals with late entries. There are some rooms (like Mohegan Sun in CT) that will start a new table with alternates only when a table and dealer are available. This has two downsides. Late players are typically really good. Back in the day at Foxwoods (FW) they started late tables only with alternates. I accidentally arrived late to a tourney at FW and started at a table with like 4 other late players. By the time we had 9 players I was the worst player at the table (which in the US in 17 years has happened only 4 times and 2 of them were final tables). The other thing is if late players know that a room does this, then multiple colluding players can register late so that they can sit at the same table...

The way I look at rebuys depends a lot on whether or not there are other tournaments to buy in. So when I am in Vegas I tend not to buy in late so I can be well rested for the next day buy in. Exceptions are in tournaments where either the fields aren't strong (WSOP Seniors) or where the outcome matters (WSOP Circuit Main Event where I was on my way out when I found myself standing on lineto buy back in - and because I could pay by Credit Card on my phone the wait time was not significant). At Parx in Bensalem there were no other tournaments so rebuys would be automatic for me. I would say it is harder to go deep when you enter at the last break. But having said that I did manage to chop 3 ways in a tourney (at FW) when I re-entered at the last potential allowable moment.

The other thing about rebuys are how long you will have to wait to get back in. At the Wynn in Vegas many years ago it could be a long time. At the Aria even now if you are an alternate at the start of the tournament the wait time will be close to 2 hours so when i bounce in the 1st or 2nd level there is no way I would buy back in.

I agree with what Rick has said.

Assuming you are a good player, you benefit from playing deeperstacked early on. When you enter late, you have a much shallower stack and the skill level difference becomes less. Also, many of the bad players are already gone.

These are interesting insights, appreciate it.

I've found playing online that rebuying is extremely common and so bad players tend to be around more later on there. I wonder if that makes entering a bit later better online.

I hope you get responses from players who play a lot online. I haven't played online in like 12 years (and it was on WPT.com so I could practice playing at final tables with fewer players because in my home State it was illegal to play online otherwise). I don't know how they handle late entries online but I doubt if they have alternates so players won't be put at the same tables with other late entries...

Good players are much more likely to rebuy than bad players. You will have some good players who will rebuy until the cut off and some bad players will give themselves X number of bullets and after they have exhausted that number, call it a day.

The better players are also much more likely to have a larger stack when you enter late.

More spots/fish/bounties if you play from the start, also some sites offer bubble protection.

I think late reg is actually mathematically +$ for a bunch of reasons, but I don’t have a source to quote - I’m sure one of these guys can mansplain.

Lots of toilet regs tend to spam late reg because they are too lazy to grind a full schedule. (In before “hi Rampage”😉

I don't think there is a single optimal answer. I know there's supposed to be some equity advantage to late registering-- your stack is worth more money the later you register, thanks to all the previously eliminated players' contributions to the prize pool-- but you also just bust so often, and there isn't an infinite number of tournaments you can play.

I know Dara O'Kearney's book talks about the benefits, but some of the late-registration assumptions he makes don't really hold up in practice, I find. Like, yeah, it's fine if you get in last second in a slow structure with 20BB or so. Online, you're going to have 10BB a lot of the time, or less. On ACR the tournaments all shorten their level lengths once late registration ends, and 10BB is the last level before it ends-- so you're not going into a 15-minute levels tournament with 20BB, you're going into an 8-minute levels tournament with like 8.33BB.

And he points out that, technically, the most profitable time to enter a tournament would be when your starting stack is one ante because you're getting such good odds on your money-- which is true, but you can't actually do that, and if you could register at the point when one starting stack was an ante, you'd be well in the money when you entered. Of course that would be profitable.

There's also no hard and fast answer because it depends on your skill set and your edge over the competition, and even that varies from tournament to tournament. If you have a really good deep stacked game and a significant skill advantage over the average player, it's probably more beneficial to register early (especially so you can re-enter if things go wrong; if you have an edge, you'll want to do that). If you're not as confident in your deep stacked game, there's not as much of an advantage. If you're comfortable at 20-40BB but not more, register at 40BB. If you think you don't have much of an edge on the field postflop but you're a stone-cold short-stack ninja, then max late registration is probably best.

Don't register PKOs too late, though, because money actually leaves the prize pool.

I also don't like registering short-handed tournaments too late, because you have to pay the blinds more often and you have less time to find a hand and start building a stack.

I've seen this theory many times, that variance is lower for a late reg. Imagine the scenario above, where you can late reg with an ante...you will be in the $, but you will virtually always get the min cash. Your variance is essentially zero. If you go back in time, variance can only go up. So max late regging, is more variance, but you will still see far more min cashes and fewer wins. Taking it all the way back to the beginning of the tournament, now your chance of min cashing is even lower, but your chances of winning the tournament go higher. This is variance.

Another way of thinking about this is simply the size of the tournament. A 100 player tournament has less than a 1000 player tournament, which in turn has less variance than a 10000 player tournament.

I'll die on this hill if I have to, but max late regging is LOW variance.

I think math’s response is closest to the one I’d endorse.

As a rule, if you have a significant edge over the field you want to register earlier because you’ll be more likely to accumulate a big stack, which gives you a chance to run deep in the tournament.

Max late-registration gives you the best chance to cash (as a significant portion of the field will be gone) but you’ll be more likely to min-cash and it will be harder to realize any skill edge you have and you will often not play large multi-street pots.

I will add that I'm more likely to max late reg a small field than a big one, since there are fewer people to get through to get to the money, and you don't need to get lucky off that short stack nearly as often to make a run.

I'll also max late reg something I wasn't necessarily planning to play, but that still has some overlay on the guarantee when late registration is ending.