Matt Glantz is in favor of reentry poker tournaments, but he shouldn’t be

Do we want poker to be skewed even further towards the most skillful practitioners? This is the problem that poker pro Matt Glantz tackles in his latest blog post regarding reentry tournaments. Glantz does a good job of laying out the pros and cons of reentry events, eventually coming down in favor of them, but in his summary Glantz makes two assumptions:

1. Many pros use the reentry format as an excuse to play wildly
2. Casual players are playing for entertainment and don’t mind having the worst of it

Point #1 makes sense on the surface, but it’s becoming a more widely held belief that taking chances to build an early stack isn’t quite the “donkey” play people once thought it was (one example of this mentality can be found here PokerForums.org ), so if a player can knowingly rebuy (which is essentially what reentry events are) it’s likely to correct to take more chances.

If a player has a 2% chance of winning a 100 player tournament at the outset, than being among the chip-leaders at the end of Day 1, with just 40 players remaining, puts him in a far better position than squeaking into Day 2. The question is; is this superior chip advantage worth paying the buy-in two to three times?

Point #2 I disagree with completely. While casual players understand they are not as good as poker pros they are aware that certain rules and formats put them at an even greater disadvantage, and reentry tournaments are at the top of the list. Poker is billed as a game where you can take on the pros, which was part of the appeal during the poker boom, but now the pros are looking for you to  not only take a shot at them, but to do so on THEIR terms – slow structures, reentries, and week-long events being the tip of the iceberg.

The mistake poker is making is to offer this great opportunity to play against the pros and potentially win millions, but to attach rules and regulations that make it near-impossible to stand a chance. It’s like the half-court shot contests at basketball games where your toe cannot so much as touch the line, and it’s getting to the point where just making the shot isn’t enough, now you have to swish it. At some point potential poker players just throw their hands up in frustration and say, “screw this, it’s not worth it.” If you want to play in a major poker tournament you need to: Take a week off from work, ok. Play in a slow structure that exponentially increases the already sizable skill factor in poker, ok. Let poker pros with deep pockets and backers enter the tournament multiple times, now you lost me.

Why are players going to take a chance in satellite tournaments if everything is working against them? Yes, casual poker players want to take their shot, and to them it is sort of like gambling, but they also want to do so on equal footing. If Nike ran a contest where you could have a shoot-off against Michael Jordan for $1,000,000 part of the contest wouldn’t be that he gets to shoot from the foul line and you have to shoot three-pointers. He already has an advantage, we don’t need to magnify it.