Chris Moorman: Rethinking Re-entry

Global #1 online pro worried about the live game.

Re-entry tournaments have become the new norm on the worldwide MTT scene for the past few years. The effects of which are starting to be seen and felt by the poker economy at large and there are some out there, including the man who helped make it popular, tournament director Matt Savage, that feel like perhaps we opened a Pandora’s box.

Standing with Matt Savage is Chris Moorman, the current #1 ranked online poker player on the planet. He recently took to his new blog to point out that re-entry tournaments are not necessarily the fantastic fad players once thought they were.

In my opinion they are in general bad for the game and are unsustainable long term.

Moorman goes on to talk about the fact that re-entry tournaments give professionals the edge in a similar way that rebuy tournaments did as it becomes an issue of who has the bigger bankroll.

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.

Chris doesn’t mean every tournament, like super high rollers, just the ones where there’s a healthy mix of recreational players taking their shot at a higher buy-in. Of course, re-entry provides higher guarantees, making tournaments more appealing, but overall, Moorman fears for the economic health of the live poker scene.

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.

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?

It’s a solid read, so if you’d like to get all of Chris Moorman’s thoughts on the state of re-entry, check out his blog on his website.

21+ in OH. Please play responsibly. For help, call the Ohio Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-800-589-9966 or 1-800-GAMBLER.
published 10 years, 4 months ago • by permalink

Keep Reading:

« Back to Homepage