  We study how the standard definitions of ADM mass and Brown-York quasi-local
energy generalize to pure Lovelock gravity. The quasi-local energy is
renormalized using the background subtraction prescription and we consider its
limit for large surfaces. We find that the large surface limit vanishes for
asymptotically flat fall-off conditions except in Einstein gravity. This
problem is avoided by focusing on the variation of the quasi-local energy which
correctly approaches the variation of the ADM mass for large surfaces. As a
result, we obtain a new simple formula for the ADM mass in pure Lovelock
gravity. We apply the formula to spherically symmetric geometries verifying
previous calculations in the literature. We also revisit asymptotically AdS
geometries.
