Final 4 at Commerce Tournament Deal -- Good or Bad?

[Scooterdoo]

Hey, I'm a caring guy!

[Scooterdoo]

True, but as someone else pointed out, he can be much more aggressive given his position so he has that advantage. Plus, the other three need him for a deal unless of course we wanted to keep on playing and risk our relative positions which is a consideration. He's not going to make a deal unless he is getting a considerable amount relative to 4th place which he already has locked up.

[Scooterdoo]

thanks to everyone who posted. Much appreciated!

[sdplayerb]

you could lock up half the deal offered to everybody for everybody.
the chipleader obviously should get more than you in the deal. but i've never really heard of a deal like this occurring.

as for the other stuff, are you playing for money or glory?
if money, take the deal. if glory, don't make the deal at all. if i was worth a million dollars i would never make a deal that wasn't awesome for me.

if you are leaning against it, say you want $17K or no deal. the last place guy could be willing to do less.

the last three or four tourney deals i've made i got more than was originally offered me.
the best was getting 2nd place money when we started the final table, i did have over 25% of the chips (i think i won 10 of the last 15 hands busting five+ people).

even though i said your deal was fair, decide what it is worth to you to stop playing. that much money would be worth it to me. but at 25x the blinds i might not make the deal.

and cardplayer goes by chip count (it did for my deals), so it doesn't matter if you got the same money as the other guy.

SD

[Scooterdoo]

Thanks for the advice. I have done well in business, so the money isn't my prime consideration -- at least at this level of money -- but I'm not an idiot and realize that it's a pretty good deal. A better deal for me would be to lock up a minimum of say $10-12k for the top 3 and play for the rest. This way the top prize is less than the published prize, but more than the deal. Anyway, just a thought.

On this tournament cardplayer went by published prize money:

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_tour...?event_id=1174

I'm the guy in 3rd at 8k-ish... don't believe it though it was $15,600 <g>!

[Greg (FossilMan)]

[ QUOTE ]
the stacks were something like:

90k chip
56k 2nd
52k me
22k short-stack

The actual prize money if played out was:

1) 34,480
2) 17,710
3) 8,855
4) 5,590

and they offered something like (from memory, not exact):

1) 24500
2) 16200
3) 15600
4) 10000

[/ QUOTE ]

Unfortunately, it appears you made a slightly bad deal when I do the math.

When I make a deal, I like to estimate my chances of finishing in each position, multiplying that chance by each prize, and adding up the numbers.

You have 23.6% of the chips, and thus a 23.6% chance of winning (or higher, if you think your skill level merits such). I then guesstimated your chances of finishing in the other spots as 30/35/11.4. Doing the math, this means your current equity is almost $17,200. Of course, this is assuming my estimates are correct. Also, if you plan on playing aggressively, your chances of winning go up, but so do your chances of finishing 4th. Similarly, a cautious approach will hurt your chances of winning, but increase your chances of finishing 2nd or 3rd (and diminishing the chances of 4th, also).

And it wasn't the short stack who got overpaid here. I estimate his equity at about $11,100. It was the chip leader, and by a mile. He has 40% of the chips, and thus a 40% chance of winning. However, he still probably had chances of finishing 2-4 of about 30/20/10. This makes his reasonable equity about $21,400, or $3000 less than he was actually paid.

This is one thing to really watch out for when making a deal. It is quite common to underpay the short stack and overpay the big stack. And it looks reasonable at the time, if you don't do the math.

I used to carry a calculator in my poker bag, until it broke, for just the purposes of doing this math when making a deal. I can tell you this, I almost never made a multiway deal when I was the short-stack, because they almost never were willing to give me enough. And I often took advantage of the ability of the big stack to negotiate a bigger deal than they deserved.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[Woody09]

Whereas its certainly not a bad deal, You are right that you are essentially even with the second place. Although I've never been lucky enough to have this type of dilemma, so i'm not sure how you would come off by refusing the deal (I guess it would be a little dickish) it may have been better for your eventual stack size if you played a little longer, maybe busted out the short stack (3 orbits i guess) and maybe moved into 2nd yourself. If not, maybe you could have used the shortstack's short stack as some leverage to get him to give some money to you and 2nd. Just a thought

[partygirluk]

Hi Greg,

is there any methodology you use for determining the likelihood of finishing 2nd/3rd/4th?

Thanks,

Partygirl

[M.B.E.]

[ QUOTE ]
Right away they take a break to calculate a potential deal (it's now 4:30am and everyone is tired).

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't understand what you mean by "they take a break". Did your three opponents go off to calculate while you stayed by yourself?

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They come back with what I considered a good 'monetary' deal. I didn't do the calculations myself at the time, but it seemed fair.

[/ QUOTE ]
It isn't a fair deal at all, from your perspective. You were being offered $15,600 when your EV at the time was at least $16,500, probably more.

[ QUOTE ]
While I was confident in my skills relative to the others, with the blinds so high anything could happen.

[/ QUOTE ]
That's no reason to accept a deal that gives you less money than your EV. It's true that there is risk involved in continuing, but all four of you share that risk. Why should you bear the brunt of it by accepting less than your EV, when the others get more?

[ QUOTE ]
The other three were happy with the deal and I didn't want to make trouble so just went along with it given that it seemed fair.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'd advise you to get rid of that attitude. These are your opponents, not your colleagues. Negotiating a deal was part of the game, not separate from it. Suppose you were in a hand and you thought your opponent had you beat, but there was a good chance you could take the pot with a bluff. Would you think to yourself, "well, I don't want to make trouble so I won't try to steal the pot here; in any event he probably has the best hand so it's fair that he wins the pot".

In other words, I am saying that even when you think a deal is "fair", in an objective sense, you should still try to negotiate something better for yourself. In the case you described, however, the deal really was not fair.

[ QUOTE ]
However, I did have two problems with it and now have some reservations. My issues were 1) I really would like to try to win, not as much for the extra money, which would be nice of course, but for the victory (can you sense I'm ultra-competitive?).

[/ QUOTE ]
Nothing wrong with that at all. There's no rule of etiquette that requires you to accept a deal even if it is fair (which this one wasn't). Just politely say "no, I've played all this time, I don't want to quit now. Deal the cards please."

[ QUOTE ]
2) We give the 4th guy his 10k-ish, guarantee the top three about 15k and play it out for the top 3 prizes. Do you think something like this would have been fair?

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't understand. Is the idea that the short stack would get $10,000 for walking away, while the rest of you continue playing? What would happen to the guy's chips -- would they just be taken out of play? I don't see any theoretical problem with this but it would be very weird and the House might not permit it.

[M.B.E.]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure why we couldn't lock up some money and still play AND have a good deal for the chip leader. I would need to think it through some more, but isn't there a scenario which limits our downside, but still allows us to play it out.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, this is called a "save" and is not uncommon when the stacks are roughly equal. For example, if there are three players left and their stacks are roughly equal (within ten percent), and the payouts for top three are $24K, $12K, $6K, someone might say "how about we change the payouts to $18K, $14K, $10K." If everyone agrees to that, it is fine. That's simple enough because the stacks are roughly equal.

In theory the same thing can be done when there is a big discrepancy in stack size, but it is more complicated. For example, suppose the stacks are 500K, 375K, 125K and prizes (as above) are $24K, $12K, $6K. Now they can't just agree to adjust the payouts or it would be unfair to the big stacks. There would have to a payout adjustment and a side payment.

In this scenario a roughly fair deal could look something like this: the eventual winner receives $18K, second place $12K, and third $7K, but on top of that the player currently with the biggest stack gets an additional $3K and the player currently with the second-biggest stack gets an additional $2K (regardless of their ultimate places).

Deals like that can be very difficult to calculate and players who don't understand the math can end up agreeing to something that sacrifices a lot of their EV. For example: Worst deal of the year.