Don’t look know but Poker Brat Phil Hellmuth is the chip leader at the final table of the $2500 Razz WSOP event 18.
And Phil Ivey is chip leader of event 17, $10,000 Pot Limit Hold 'Em with only three players left.
So what do you guys think of this occurrence last night…
Antonio Esfandiari has most of the chips in play. Probably 80%. There is a $77,000 payout difference between 2nd and 3rd and both other players are about equal in chips. Esfandiari obviously realizes the pay difference is huge and leans on both of them since neither wants to be the first one out. Players 2 & 3 notice what’s going on and want to discuss a deal to chop 2nd and 3rd place money evenly. This would have prevented Antonio from continuing to lean on them to bleed them out of chips.
Antonio, of course, objects, and they both come back to the table with no deal made. Twitter blows up about whether such a move would be considered collusion or not. A manager was actually at HOME watching the live stream and drove in to help deal with it. The overwhelming opinion seemed to be that such a move would have been considered collusion, however with a 142 character limit, obviously, nobody really elaborated.
What say you?
80%-10%-10% lead is a big lead, but it only takes two double ups for one the short stacks to pull essentially even with the big stack.
I am reviewing PokerNews’ Live Reporting on Poker, and
Esfandiari finished third
Sounds to me like those two guys are quitters.
Nolan Dalla was talking on the live stream last week and he said one of the winners of a bracelet that week had been down 15:1 in chips in heads up play before mounting a great comeback to win the whole thing.
It’s not impossible and if you have any sort of competitive spirit or belief in your abilities you don’t just award someone first place.
As far as collusion, I think it would count. Since they’re deal would affect the outcome of the tournament far more than if the final two players agree to a deal, which leans it in the direction of collusion.
One of the most epic collapses I’ve ever seen. Like, 2-3 hands after the deal kerfluffle, Antonio gets it in with 99 vs. 77; 7 on the turn.. Then calls a cold push with AJ, guy turns over AK. Then he’s short, calls with K9s guy pushed in front with KT. Antonio signs an autograph for one of the other guys then walks out. Chip leader to busto in probably 8 hands. I’d have been utterly numb.
I believe that was a Limit Holdem event or something. Both players at some point heads up had 90% of the chips.
So today will be the beginning of the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship, eight game mixed tournament. Also, today has already seen the beginning of the “broke dicks” discount $1,000 tournament for anyone not skilled enough to play eight different varieties of poker or not a high enough roller to afford 50,000 Benjies.
EDIT: Can’t wait to see Ivey make the PPC tourney his first bracelet of the year. How’d that be for awesomeness?
I HATE “deals” in poker, glad it didn’t happen. Sucks Antonio fell apart.
Off-topic: I appreciate everyone spoilering results. 
I’m good at math.
I mean 500 Benjies.
See why I don’t actually play poker?
This is the sort of romantic idea that poker-interested amateurs would espouse, but I don’t think poker players would actually ever think that way.
You’re in there to maximize the money you can make. If someone offers you a deal that beats your average expectation from playing on, you take it. Now you may adjust that expectation by your assumptions about how much you can outplay your opponents by, but at some point you come up with a number, and if that number is less than the deal being offered, take the deal.
I had a 3:1 chip lead once in a tournament where the payout for first was $106k and second was $64k. The sort of macho idea here is that you should just finish it out and take first - but tournaments are generally designed to be crapshoots, especially later on. Even if I’m significantly better than my opponent, it barely matters - you get into situatons where you’ve both got 12BBs or something and there’s very little room for play. You’re forced to push/call pushes with a large section of your range and it’s very low skill/very high randomness at this stage. The main reason tournament poker sucks - it’s designed all wrong - the money is all distributed in the last few places at the end, but at that stage in the tournament is the least skillful play.
So I could’ve finished him out and taken home 106k, but we could’ve easily ended up in a situation where both of us would be correct to push it all on a 55/45 proposition. He just needed to double up once and we’re back to even. I didn’t want to gamble the 42k difference.
So I settled and took slightly less than my fair share - 92.5 - just to lock up the money. I didn’t need to get into a macho pissing match to not be a quitter - I extracted close to the maximum I could’ve out of the situation.
I agree with Beef about the practicality of making deals in general. I don’t see a problem with it, and I thought that it was the norm in most non-televised tournaments.
However, I’d not heard before of a deal between the bottom 2 players of a 3 player group and I wonder if that type of deal is ethical? Or indeed, any deal not including everyone left playing? I think what the bottom two players did was a great idea to hedge away variance, and also get rid of the ICM hammer Esfandiari was holding over them, but I’m not sure if it was an ethical thing to do. Part of me thinks that Esfandiari should’ve joined the deal instead of bitching about losing his hammer: carve out whatever ICM thinks he should’ve gotten ($338k of the $369k first prize, assuming an 80-10-10 chip split, and the eventual money payouts), play for the bracelet (and the side bets), and move on to the next tournament already.
As mensa pointed out, that would have been a +187k decision for him. Cue Nelson Muntz…
How are such splits calculated? Is it just the difference in prize money between 1st and 2nd place, multiplied by the percentage of each person’s stack? That is, if 1st is 100k and 2nd is 60k, and the chip leader has 80% of the chips, would a normal split be 92K and 68K?
I agree that Antonio could have (and maybe should have ) brought himself into the deal and locked up most of the first prize money.
But he didn’t. And it was completely unethical for #2 and #3 to try to hammer out a deal against #1. It’s collusion, plain and simple.
That would be the normal and best way of doing it. Other factors one can consider is a) how many BB does each player have b) how many rounds worth of chips does each player have c) Who’s the most aggressive player? d) who’s considered the better player?
Some of these can be helpful to look at. But most of it’s just a big pissing match and going with straight math is usually best.
Phil Ivey is leading the WSoP Player of the Year standings.
This thread at 2+2 goes into some of the considerations behind making a deal. It references this post from 2004, which explains what a ‘chip chop’ is. ICM differs in that, IIRC, it takes into account probabilities of winning other places besides the top prize. Anyway, you’ll get different results with an ICM chop vs a chip chop, as explained by this quote from a post in the first thread I cited:
Very controversial hand in Pot Limit Omaha of the 50K Poker Championship
Wish I could summarize it, but I could not do it justice.
IMO, one of the root causes for this controversy is the fact one of the players tanked for 10-15 minutes before making a call. There is NFW that someone should take any more than a couple of mintues (and that is generous) to make a decision.
Yikes, I wouldn’t want to be the floor on that one. I’ve got no floor experience but my gut feeling was that the first solution was the technically correct one, even though everyone was screaming worst floor decision ever.
I wonder if they schedule their best dealers on the big tournaments like the 50k. The series brings in a lot of dealers of questionable quality, but you wouldn’t want a massive fuckup like that in your big ones. Massive in terms of implication anyway - it’s a relatively understandable mistake.
Actually, I may have misunderstood the initial call. Was it to take it back to the flop action, or just rerun the turn and river? The latter makes no sense.
I had to read it a couple times to figure out just what was going on. And I am still not clear. I think it was Turn and River only. How could they re-run on Turn and River? (with new cards?)
Yes, you would want the most experienced dealers at the bigger events.
I talked with a Poker Dealer who was one of the final table dealers at the WPT in Tunica Mississippi, the 10K event. She said she was nervous as hell. I asked her how long she had been a poker dealer and she said about year and half. Which I didn’t think was very long.