Chopping question (live 18 person tourney)

[hobbsmann]

So I was NYC over the weekend and ended up at the satellite club around 5 or 6pm on Sunday and they were just starting their $250 tourney. There were no cash games going so I said screw it, lets play. The players sucked and a couple hours go by and I find my self in the final four.

Important info
stacks: me - 51,000, old guy - 34,000, other smallish stack - 34,000, middle aged guy - 85,000.

payout: 1st - $2700, 2nd - $1225, 3rd - $575.

These numbers might be a little off, but they are at least ballpark.

Now the issue is that two of the guys wanted to make a deal and chop up the prize money based on stack sizes at the time. This would give me a little over second place money ($1275). Now I have a fairly decent edge over the rest of the table, but the blinds were at 500/1000 and there really weren't any 'short' stacks so I thought at the time that the rest of the tournament was still kind of craps shot.

What is the best way to figure out whether to take a deal such as the one above? Did I make the right choice or is playing better? Is this just a question of a trade off between variance vs. expectation?

thanks for the help.

[Shorty35]

Were the blinds 5K/10K or just 500/1000?

If its the latter, this isnt even close to a crap shoot (you have 50xBB!). Keep playing.

If you have an M over 20 (yours is like 35) and you feel you have an edge on most of the players then just keep playing.

Though for me I would have been very tempted to make a deal, thats a good amount of change. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

You have about 25% of the chips. 25% of the prize pool is $1125, so I might hold out for something like $1400 if I thought I had a big edge against these guys. Really depends on bankroll considerations though if the money would really help then I think you have to settle and you are still getting more than 25%. I think this all changes if there was a super short stack in danger of elimination, in which case I would want more.