Mailbag: Dealmaking

Q: I’m curious to hear your take on dealmaking generally and on a deal I made recently at the final table of a live tournament. Blinds were 5K/10K/1K. Payouts were $3000 for 1st, $1600 for 2nd, $1000 for 3rd, and $700 for 4th.

There was talk of a chop, but we decided to keep playing. I thought I had an edge as all three left were over 60 years old and don’t play shorthanded very much. They are generally too tight and don’t call unless they have a very strong hand. I shoved several times from the SB vs BB short stack, but he finally woke up with AJ and outran my QT.

Now he had 120K, I had 100K, and the other two had 160K and 250K. They all wanted to chop giving the bigger stack a little more. With blinds this high, I decided to give in and chop for 1500 (big stack got 1800).

Should I keep playing in these spots and try to win 3K, or take 2^nd place money in a chop when one hand can bust me? What are your guidelines on when to chop and how much is fair for a chip leader?

A: There is a way to calculate your equity in this situation, ignoring factors like skill, who will get blinds next, etc. Essentially it calculates the odds of each player finishing in each position based on their current stacks. This gets complex really quickly with a large field size, but there are spreadsheets/calculators that can do it for up to 10 or so players (I believe this is what Pokerstars uses to tell you your chip-chop equity when discussing a final table deal).

Intuitively, it’s pretty easy to see this is a good deal for you. You are in last place and getting paid nearly second-place money, the same amount as someone who has 60% more chips than you do. According to this calculator, your true equity was $1255.56. Even allowing for some skill edge, which couldn’t have been that huge given how big the blinds were and that your opponents were onto you regarding how wide you were shoving, you got about 20% more than your chip-chop equity. This was probably a good deal for everyone except the big stack, who deserved to get more like $2000 to $2100.

A good rule of thumb in live settings especially is to take deals as a short stack but not as a big stack. Generally people will err on the side of flattening out the payouts, which benefits you when, as here, you figure to win less, but hurts you when you figure to win more. Then again, sometimes they are so desperate to make a deal that you can get them to give you more than you deserve, in which case it’s usually worth it to deal.

It’s always worth talking, once you understand how to recognize a good deal, because dealmaking provides another way for you to get an edge on your opponents. Many don’t understand how to determine their equity or are just desperate and will give away more than they should. I’ve seen a guy with a 2:1 chiplead in a live sit-and-go offer an even chop.

The one possible advantage of playing it out is to get experience in these late-game, short-handed situations. It used to be I could just tell you to play some sit-and-goes online, but if like the author of this letter you live in the US, then that’s not currently an option. Playing out a small final table like this where the difference in money isn’t a big deal to you can give you some practice in case you ever final table something big.

Then again, with blinds this big, there’s not much play left. I’d say our author was wise to take the deal.

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