Ensan is the Man

Enjoyed once again following the many days’ worth of coverage of the European Poker Tour Prague Main Event over on EPT Live this week, in particular yesterday’s final table and the lengthy heads-up match between Hossein Ensan and Gleb Tremzin, eventually won by Ensan.

I knew of Ensan before, though not specifically because the 51-year-old German (orginally from Iran) had previously made two EPT Main Event final tables, finishing third at EPT11 Barcelona and sixth at EPT11 Malta. I remembered him more for having won two silver spades in prelims at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo back in May where I was helping cover side events.

He’s up over $2 million now in live tournament earnings, all won since 2013, with several wins and final tables. All that helps suggest his skills as a player, although I think anyone watching the live stream yesterday also would appreciate his creativity, too, with a number of interesting, unexpected decisions made in hands that obviously put his opponents on the defensive.

Heads-up in particular included a number of intriguing hands to follow, with Tremzin also providing some worthy opposition in terms of making plays and taking risks. What stood out, though, was the good sportsmanship displayed by both, evidenced in particular both in the deal the pair struck and in one particular hand that came afterwards.

There had been some deal discussion at four-handed, though nothing was agreed upon then. Then after Ilkin Amirov was knocked out in third, the remaining two discussed a deal with Ensan ahead in chips with about 17.5 million to Tremzin’s 13.8 million. Despite his lead, Ensan was fine with an even split of most of the remaining prize money, with each player getting €724,510 and €30,000 left for which to play.

I’ve written here before about the EPT not just allowing deals (unlike the WSOP), but also letting spectators and viewers at home follow along with those discussions, and once again the deal talks were interesting to watch. It was also nice to see how agreeable the pair were in the discussions, with Ensan being so amenable and not being too bothered to push for more thanks to his chip lead. Perhaps all of his cashes over the last couple of years made it easier for him to make that choice, but for those of us on the virtual rail it perhaps inspired a slight rooting interest going forward.

Heads-up was kind of wild, with the lead changing several times and as I already mentioned a lot of interesting postflop play. The two players ended up playing 122 hands, and it was on the 84th one of heads-up another moment arose that resulted in Ensan showing himself to be an especially likable character.

Tremzin had a small lead to begin the hand which started as a limped pot followed by a checked flop, then the turn brought a check-call from Ensan. The river then saw Ensan lead with a bet, then after a short pause Tremzin made a hefty raise.

Watching on a delay, we could see that the board had run out and that Ensan was betting with a lowly pair of fives as he held . The reader had only picked up one of Tremzin’s cards -- the -- which had made it curious to see him put in a big raise (what could he have?).

Ensan then only took about 20 seconds before making a big reraise back -- also interesting to see, and a good example of his boldness -- doing so wordlessly by pushing the needed chips forward. Tremzin immediately said “good call” and began to show his hand. Meanwhile Ensan could be heard saying “You call? You win,” having decided that if he were called there, his fives couldn’t possibly be good.

The miscommunication became apparent when we saw Tremzin had complete air with . He’d said “good call” -- not “I call” (as Ensan thought) -- having missed the fact that Ensan wasn’t just calling his raise but was actually reraising.

Discussion followed, with Tremzin explaining what had happened and adding “of course I’m not calling” with the hand he held. It took a little while for everything to become clear to all, with the TDs also listening and appearing as though they were on the verge of making a decision in the matter.

The problem, of course, was that Tremzin had used one of those “action” words -- i.e., “call” -- which when used in spots where one’s intention is different than the action the word indicates can lead to problems. Robert Woolley wrote a good article for PokerNews about this issue a while back titled “You Can Say These Words at the Table, But Be Careful When You Do.”

“Okay gentleman... it’s okay,” said Ensan, interrupting the discussion while making a thumbs-up gesture. “I don’t want more,” he added, echoing the position he’d taken during the deal-making.

The TDs actually still had to rule on the matter, but they went along with Ensan and decided to rule Tremzin didn’t have to call the reraise, as he obviously didn’t intend to with the hand he held. The players retook their seats and continued to talk about the hand as the dealer readied for the next hand.

“Next time, don’t bluff,” Ensan cracked. Tremzin grinned as he responded, “But you bluffed also.”

“I had five... I was good!” replied Ensan, getting a big laugh from both Tremzin and the rail. Tremzin clapped his hands as well in acknowledgment of the inspired quip.

It was a fun moment to watch, and again made it easy to root for Ensan going forward. Tremzin, too, was understanding and easy-going in a spot that it was easy to imagine could have been a lot less amiable, say, with different players involved or in a different tournament. The combination of good sportsmanship and skillful play made it an especially enjoyable match to watch.

Great Deal of Fun in WCOOP Finale

Fun stuff earlier tonight railing the final table of the World Championship of Online Poker Main Event on PokerStars, mainly because of the ongoing deal discussions that began even before play got going today with nine players left.

The $5,200 buy-in tournament drew 1,995 players which meant it came just five players shy of reaching the number needed to match the $10 million guarantee for the prize pool. A total of 243 players cashed in the sucker, but over half of the prize pool -- $5.446 million -- was still up for grabs with nine left.

During the minutes leading up to today’s restart, the table’s short stack, a Belgian going by “Coenaldinho7,” was proposing to everyone a hilarious nine-way chop in which (if I remember it correctly) each would take half a million, leaving the rest (nearly another milly) up top for the winner. No one even acknowledged that he was saying anything.

The deal requests continued from Coenaldinho7 thereafter, pretty much after each knockout, and finally with five left they got to talking seriously about the possibility. No deal happened then, but one finally did with four remaining -- you can read details over in the recap on the PokerStars blog.

Interestingly, once the deal was made both Coenaldinho7 and beertjes79 (also from Belgium) willingly gave up money to ensure the chop would happen. In fact, beertjes79 -- then the short stack among the four -- volunteered to give up over $50K (taking $800K). Coenaldinho7 meanwhile readily gave up about $27K to ensure a guaranteed payout of $1.1 million. Watching that made it easy to root for both of them going forward, and it was kind of amusing in the end to see Coenaldinho7 take it down to earn a $1.3 million score.

Have written here before many times about the sometimes fascinating psychology of final table deal-making and how it really becomes in many cases an extension of the game itself. As the WCOOP ME final table was progressing, I noticed talk reviving on Twitter about the WSOP and its draconian prohibition against final table deals (again).

The WSOP changes its line regarding this policy from time to time, and depending on who is addressing the subject and when, you’ll hear different explanations. Sometimes they say it has to do with regulations from Nevada Gaming, which doesn’t really make sense. Other times they’ll suggest not allowing deals protects the players, although that, too, seems counterintuitive, given that the policy forces deal-making “under the table” (so to speak).

Meawhile in the WSOP Conference Call last May it was suggested the policy actually has more to do with spectators and fans than with players. “The general public really doesn’t want to see skill-based games played that way,” explained WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart. “I can tell you ESPN producers and viewers [also] don’t want to see poker played that way,” he added, suggesting perhaps the prohibition has more to do with what ESPN wants than what the WSOP does.

But as we saw today -- and at many EPT Main Event final tables, too -- the deal-making can sometimes be as entertaining or even more so than the poker itself.

On the WSOP Conference Call

With a little over two weeks to go before the start of this year’s World Series of Poker, the WSOP conducted its annual conference call for the media on Tuesday.

Ty Stewart (WSOP Executive Director), Jack Effel (WSOP Tournament Director), Bill Rini (WSOP.com Head of Online Poker), and Seth Palansky (VP of Corporate Communications for CIE) were on the call. As usual, each started out with statements covering various items, then the group fielded questions to round out the hour.

Here’s a full rundown of what was discussed, if you’re curious: “Highlights from the 2015 World Series of Poker Conference Call.”

The Q&A was a bit more interesting than were the statements which contained a few news items but mostly just reiterated schedule details and other information for players.

The first question was about the Colossus, the $565 buy-in event coming during the first weekend for which expectations are very high in terms of the turnout. The question asked about scheduling the Colossus early rather than later in the schedule, and while the answer to that was predictable (“we think we’re ready”), the WSOP’s unbridled optimism regarding the turnout will make it interesting to see just how many play.

It’ll also be interesting to see how well the WSOP meets the logistical challenge they’ve given themselves to stage a tournament that will surely draw more than 10,000 entries, and perhaps much, much more than that. “If it is not by a large margin the biggest event in the history of poker, it will be a disappointment,” said Stewart.

There were other questions about the Colossus, about betting on final tables, about patch restrictions, about making the November Nine a three-day affair (rather than two), about WSOP.com-related matters (including the online bracelet event), about satellites, and more. The most interesting question, I thought, was the one from Kevin Mathers (representing BLUFF) about final table deals and the WSOP’s long-held policy to prohibit them.

I noticed some discussion of that topic last week over Twitter, with Palansky dipping in with a few confusing comments before stepping out of the conversation. The answer this time came from Stewart who echoed what the WSOP has said in the past about how (in their view) those watching WSOP events would rather see them played out to a conclusion rather than have the climactic moment in which a winner is determined muted by a deal.

The policy (as stated in this way) has more to do with spectators than with players. “The general public really doesn’t want to see skill-based games played that way,” said Stewart. “I can tell you ESPN producers and viewers [also] don’t want to see poker played that way.”

This is a curious point of view, contrasting markedly with how the European Poker Tour (for instance) has handled the issue of both deal-making and audience expectations and/or desires. The reference to “skill-based games” is also interesting, given that a frequent motive for making a final table deal is to reduce the role luck plays in determining how remaining prize money gets divided.

Stewart described those supporting deal-making at the WSOP as “a small and vocal minority,” suggesting that for most players at the WSOP it would be a negative to allow deals. I’m not sure that’s really the case -- i.e., that only a minority support being able to make deals at the WSOP -- and thus I don’t think that issue is going to go away, especially as players continue to make deals on their own, anyway.

Just a couple of weeks to go.

What the Winner Wins

Well, I couldn’t shut off that EPTLive stream last night, watching all of the way to the very end of the protracted heads-up battle between Sam Phillips and eventual winner Andre Lettau on my iPhone just before finally hitting the hay.

The last EPT Main Event in Monaco back in May had ended similarly, with an 18-hour final table and a heads-up match that went about 10 hours (with breaks) and lasted 237 hands. This time the final table went for something like 15 hours, and while heads-up “only” lasted 142 hands and a little over six hours with the dinner break, it was still a marathon for all involved.

The huge field of 1,496 entrants helped ensure there’d be deep stacks at the end, and Phillips and Lettau managed to work all of the way into the 600,000/1,200,000 blind level (with a 200,000 ante) before reaching a conclusion. Lettau prevailed, which meant thanks to the three-handed deal runner-up Phillips earned considerably more than did the champion, taking away more than €1,000,000 from the prize pool while Lettau ended with €794,058.

Always kind of awkward when reporting on a tournament when a deal is made and the winner isn’t the one actually earning the biggest prize. Makes for some lengthy headlines and lots of qualifying statements when referring to the event. Asterisks are sometimes needed when reporting payouts, too, reflecting adjustments made.

Such a circumstance probably also adds another layer of ambiguity preventing poker tournaments from being considered analogous to sporting events, even if they can be argued to resemble them in many other respects. We can’t really imagine, say, a pair of tennis players in the finals of a tourney stopping short of a fifth-set tiebreaker to narrow the gap between first- and second-place prize money before continuing.

Indeed, the whole process of deal-making highlights a couple of crucial differences between poker tournaments and other sports -- the fact that players pay to play, and that money is itself an element of the game.

Deals in poker tournaments often have a tangible effect on how play proceeds thereafter. Some pros don’t like making deals because of the way they lessen the money pressure their opponents may not be as equipped to handle as they are. I said yesterday how I enjoy watching the deals being made because the process can directly reflect how players play the game itself. Deals really are part of the game, one of a number of reasons why most can’t call poker a sport.

By the way, I might have mentioned this before, but I wrote a three-part series over on Learn.PokerNews some time ago about deal-making in tournaments, for those who might be interested. I was inspired to write it after watching some MicroMillions players stumbling through deals at final tables, understandably uncertain about how they worked. It covers the logistics, some strategic considerations, and includes some fun deal-making anecdotes, too -- the series starts here.

Deals also help make explicit the various reasons why people play poker tournaments, specifically the way they draw a stark distinction between playing for money and playing for the prestige of winning.

Being an EPT champion, for example, does have value, as was clearly demonstrated by the earnestly-fought battle between Phillips and Lettau yesterday. Sure, €90,000 was on the line -- perhaps a relatively small percentage of both players’ winnings, but hardly insignificant. But getting that favored position in the headlines and the subsequent “EPT champ” adjective attached to your name was worth playing for, too.

Bartering in Barcelona

Pretty well locked into this EPT Barcelona Main Event final table right now, which has finally reached heads-up after a deal was made at three-handed.

The deal came at a time when the U.S. player Sam Phillips enjoyed a huge chip lead over the two Germans, Andre Lettau and Hossein Ensan. Ensan won the Seniors Event, incidentally, so it has been a great week for him.

At the time of the deal, Phillips had close to 30 million chips, I believe, while the other two were down around 7 million or just under. They weren’t able to come to terms during the first round of talks, but paused the tourney again and eventually made the deal happen, with Phillips locking up €1,021,275, Lettau €704,058, and Ensan €652,667, with €90,000 left on the table for which to play.

As I write, Ensan just busted in third and Phillips nearly eliminated on the first hand of heads-up, but the latter scored a double-up and the final two battle onward.

Deals at the EPT are all made out in the open -- unlike at the WSOP where the rules nominally forbid deal-making, thus forcing players to make the deals privately. As such, media generally can’t report on deals made at the WSOP, since they aren’t necessarily privy to their details nor assured of their veracity. Nor are deals at the WSOP reflected in results chronicled by the Hendon Mob and other sites.

It’s better for the players to have tourney organizers help oversee such negotiations and guarantee the adjusted payouts are correctly applied. What happens at the EPT is very much like what you see play out on the PokerStars client when an online tournament such as the Sunday Million is paused at the final table for players to discuss a chop. A moderator arrives in the chat box, often providing both “chip chop” and “ICM”-based figures (while setting some money aside for which to play), discussions ensue, and if a deal is made the payouts are automatically adjusted.

Watching the deal-making play out today, I couldn’t help but think back to last year’s EPT Barcelona Main Event when I was there to help cover the tournament for the PokerStars blog. At four-handed there was an especially lengthy discussion (around 45 minutes, I think) that ultimately did not result in a deal being made. I wrote a little about that here at the time, and Rick Dacey wrote a good, informative feature about the process on the PS blog that day as well. (A deal was eventually struck at heads-up between eventual winner Tom Middleton and Kimmo Kurko.)

This time the tournament director made it clear that the EPT has revised its policies regarding deal-making, limiting the time they can spend and also how much advice players can solicit from friends on the rail. I think I heard players being instructed they could only talk to a single friend and only briefly, a proscription clearly designed to prevent the extended negotiations-within-negotiations that happened last year when Middleton was not only bartering with his opponents but working out a deal with others buying pieces as well.

“This is always fascinating, I think,” said Jake Cody who was helping with the commentary at the time of the deal. To me it’s also all quite interesting to follow, the analogies between poker strategy and the kinds of strategy employed during deal-making making even more intriguing when the entire process is able to be witnessed in all of its detail.

I wonder, though, like I did last year, how it plays to the wider audience, many of whom -- including the most devoted poker players/fans -- find deal-making especially tedious to watch. Joe Stapleton shared on the commentary that according to the tweets the audiences seemed divided evenly between those who enjoyed watching it and those who found it a bore.

Understandable. Hard enough to believe some enjoy watching people playing cards, but watching people not play cards? How could that be interesting?

Meals and Deals

Still in holiday mode around here after yesterday’s marathon of football and repeated helpings of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and everything else. Even had a full serving of sushi near night’s end to add a weird (though delicious) twist to the gourmandizing extravaganza.

Got two of three games correct yesterday, having gone with the Steelers in the nightcap and endured that painful almost-but-not-quite finish for Pittsburgh. Feel good about the pick even if it didn’t work out, as it seemed like a reasonable gamble to go with the visitors.

Speaking of taking gambles, this week over on the Learn site I’ve been exploring the topic of final table deal-making, partly inspired by the preponderance of deals I saw being made during the recently concluded MicroMillions 6 series on PokerStars -- the deals, of course, often being proposed and agreed to primarily to avoid taking gambles late in a tourney when the stacks are shallow and the pay jumps steep.

The MicroMillions series can be especially interesting when it comes to final table deals because many of the players involved in the discussions aren’t necessarily that well versed in the nuances of final table deal negotations. With such low buy-ins (many of the events are just a couple of bucks or thereabouts to play), there are a lot of players making the final tables who’ve never come close to winning, say, $1,000 in a single tournament (or more). So it stands to reason some might not have ever dealt with dealing.

Watching some of the discussions take place, I started thinking about how it might be somewhat useful to give a little primer on the process, and so ended up writing a three-parter this week on Learn talking about final table deals, how they work, and some of the pros and cons for making them.

The first part mainly just introduces the topic, then in the second part I spent some time explaining the what “chip count” (or “chip chop”) deals were and what a deal based on the “ICM” (“Independent Chip Model”) method of assigning cash values to stacks was. That latter discussion took a little while to get through, but I hope it comes off as easy enough to read and ultimately helpful.

Then in the third part I got into some of the reasons why people want to make final table deals as well as reasons why others do not. Again, it goes on a while, in part because I spend some time talking about both a wild heads-up deal in Macau from a year ago and the famous story of Moneymaker offering a deal to Farha in the 2003 WSOP Main Event (and Farha refusing).

But like I say, I hope the articles end up being of use to someone who might eventually find him or herself at the final table of a MicroMillions event (or some other tourney) and thankful for having had an introduction to the whole process of such deals.

Here are the links to those three articles:

Let’s Make a Deal: Introducing Deal-Making in Tournaments

Let’s Make a Deal: “Chip Count” and “ICM” Deals

Let’s Make a Deal: Reasons For and Against Final Table Deals

Have a good weekend, all. I’m off to see if there’s anything left on that carcass in the fridge.

Chop Talk

Yesterday I spent part of the day looking in on the EPT Live coverage of the Super High Roller final table in London. There was a moment after it went to three-handed when play was halted and the remaining players discussed the possibility of chopping the remaining prize money, with the ensuing pause reminding me a bit of the final table of the Main Event in Barcelona where there was a long, similar discussion when that tournament got down to four-handed.

Like happened in Barcelona, no deal was made. (There was ultimately a deal struck heads-up in Spain.) However unlike in Barcelona the discussion yesterday seemed a lot less strife-ridden among the three remaining players, Martin Finger, Tobias Reinkemeier, and Christoph Vogelsang. Perhaps the fact that all are fellow countrymen helped make for a friendlier conversation. By the way, as happened in the WCOOP Main Event a week ago, the Germans grabbed all top three spots in this tourney, too.

Much later in the night -- really in the wee hours as I watched that late-night San Diego-Oakland game on television -- I was following the end of the Sunday Million that similarly saw play paused at the final table when the last five players opted to discuss a possible deal.

It used to be the case in these big PokerStars tourneys that only “chip chop” numbers were provided. Then occasionally one player would bring up the alternative ICM method and produce figures, and that would engender further debate. Eventually it became the norm for someone to bring ICM into the mix, and so at some point the moderators at PokerStars began also providing those figures in addition to the “chip chop” ones whenever the deal discussion was begun.

The “chip chop” method has all the remaining players receive the amount of prize money due the next player eliminated, with the remaining prize money then divided proportionally according to the remaining stacks. (In Stars’ tourneys, there’s usually some money set aside for which to play going forward, too.)

Meanwhile the ICM method also guarantees each player the next spot’s prize money, but then divides up the remaining prize money by using the ICM formula that takes into account the fact that short stacks can potentially double up. The ICM method thus doesn’t operate like the “chip chop” method and say each chip is worth the exact same amount of cash (and thus ignore whether that chip is sitting in a big or short stack).

When the five-handed deal talk began in the Sunday Million last night, two players had about 20 million chips each while the other three each had between 7-9 million. Both sets of deal numbers were produced, and the discussion went as predictably as one might imagine, with the big stacks saying they preferred the “chip chop” method (which gave them more cash) while the other three insisted they wanted to go with ICM (which gave them more). (The latter group ultimately prevailed.)

I remember once in one of the MicroMillions tourneys seeing a large number of players -- seven, I think -- manage to stop the tourney to talk about a deal, with one of the seven actually sitting with more than half the chips in play at the time. The “chip chop” numbers were produced, with the chip leader being guaranteed something like $15K or thereabouts. However, first-place prize money for the event was only $13K or so!

“Sounds good to me,” typed the leader at the sight of those numbers, and it only took the others a short while to figure out things needed to be negotiated further.

It seems to me like the possibility of actually guaranteeing a chip leader more than first-place prize money makes the “chip chop” method necessarily flawed in some fundamental way. However, I think I like the idea Stars has of supplying both sets of figures as a way to mark out some ranges for payouts from which players can begin their chop talk.

We also had fun playing the first tournaments of Season 5 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games last night (as I mentioned would be happening last week). There were no deals -- neither “chip chop” nor ICM -- at those final tables. No, in the HBP Home Games we fight for every last play money chip in the prize pool right to the very end.

Lehavot’s Leveraging

One of this year’s November Nine, Amir Lehavot (currently second in chips), yesterday announced that he was selling pieces of himself to interested buyers. He tweeted the news, linking to a Two Plus Two thread he’d begun outlining the details of his offer.

In the thread-starter Lehavot makes reference to past results (mostly online) and to the fact that going into the Main Event he had 80% of his action. Of that, he’s now offering up 30% (overall) while keeping 50%.

The price Lehavot is setting on shares he’s deriving from the value of his current stack as determined by the Independent Chip Model (ICM) such as is often used when negotiating final table chops. Subtracting the ninth-place money he and each of the other final tablists have already been given ($733,224) and then comparing his current stack to the remaining prize money still up for grabs, this makes his stack of 29.7 million chips “worth” $2,924,822 according to ICM.

Thus the price for 1% of Lehavot for potential buyers is $29,248, nearly three times the Main Event buy-in.

Lehavot will need to finish third or better in order for investors to make any profit at all. To finish third would mean earning a $3,727,023 payday for Lehavot. Take away the $733,224 he’s already gotten, that adds up to $2,993,799; thus, every 1% purchased for $29,248 would get back $29,938, or just a little less than $700.

If Lehavot finishes fourth, that will only yield $20,588 per 1% (a loss of more than $8K), and so on down to a ninth-place finish which would mean investors get zero return. If he finishes second, 1% would be worth $44,399 (about $15K profit), and if he wins, 1% would be worth $76,263 (about $47K).

From Lehavot’s perspective, if he were to sell all 30% he’s offering, that puts another $877,440 in his pocket before he plays a hand in November, which added to the ninth-place money is a little better than the total prize for finishing sixth.

While most responding in the thread are critical of the deal, a few are not. Meanwhile, responses to Lehavot’s original tweet are mostly characterizing it a less than attractive offer for buyers (“it’s only a good deal if your name is Amir Lehavot,” says one).

I think I belong to that latter, skeptical group when it comes to assessing the merits of Lehavot’s offer. But setting the actual deal aside, it seems to me that the whole idea of a November Niner selling pieces of himself at the delayed Main Event final table must be creating a headache for the WSOP.

The issue of deal making at the WSOP has always been complicated. Unlike on the European Poker Tour where everything is done out in the open -- such as was exemplified with a little bit of extra drama at the recent EPT Barcelona Main Event final table -- the WSOP doesn’t acknowledge or help broker deals. There have even been suggestions here and there that the WSOP doesn’t allow deals at all, although that isn’t really the case.

Back in 2010 in a $1,500 limit hold’em shootout event there was a notable instance of a player -- Yueqi Zhu -- being disqualified at the start of the tourney’s second round after having made a deal heads-up with his short-stacked opponent in the previous round to ensure he would advance. At the start of the next day Zhu was disqualified, with WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel at the time announcing “there is no deal making at the World Series of Poker.”

In truth, Zhu’s case wasn’t simply “deal making” but an instance of a player essentially giving up his chips to Zhu at the end of their match, an action considered as having violated the WSOP’s rule about “Ethical Play” which states “Poker is an individual game. Soft play will result in penalties that may include forfeiture of chips and/or disqualification. Chip dumping will result in disqualification.”

The WSOP has no specific rules (that I know of) forbidding final table deal making in the traditional sense, although like I say they don’t help players make the deals nor do they recognize them when it comes to payouts and tax documents. (Thus does Lehavot also add a note to his offer about needing SSNs from investors to handle potential tax issues later on.)

I have to guess the WSOP isn’t crazy about Lehavot selling shares of himself this way -- i.e., so publicly -- and thus foregrounding the whole idea of final table deal making. What would happen if all nine of the players were to make similar offers? What if they started buying pieces of each other? Or what if all nine arrived at a more traditional arrangement to flatten out the payouts prior to the start of play in November?

Four-plus months of down time obviously gives us lots of time to imagine such scenarios. Gives the players a lot of time to ponder them, too.

That’s What’s the Deal We’re Dealing In

Pretty much since returning home from Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker, I’ve been occupied for much of each day following these MicroMillions 5 tournaments on PokerStars. This is the online series that features teeny weeny buy-ins -- usually only a buck or three -- and huge fields, thus enabling players who make deep runs and/or win often to enjoy thousandfold returns on their investments (and then some).

Unlike the Sunday Millions, Super Tuesdays, or other higher buy-in, regular weekly events on the site, these MicroMillions events generally don’t feature too many recognizable usernames at the end. Not coincidentally, they don’t usually feature too much talk of final table deals, either, although occasionally some players making it to the final few will manage to talk about chopping and even cut some deals here and there.

Was watching one event yesterday -- a $1 no-limit hold’em event with rebuys and a turbo structure -- in which the final three players did succeed in pausing the tournament to discuss dividing up the remaining prize money.

The tourney had attracted more than 27,000 players, and the chip stacks at that point were humongous with all of the rebuys and add-ons. The leader had more than 622 million, second-place had about 245 million, and the guy in third had 86 million. The blinds were big too, though -- about to go to 6m/12m, and increasing every five minutes thereafter -- so we’re talking stacks at that point of about 52 big blinds, then about 20 BBs, then just over 7 BBs.

“Chip chop” figures were produced (leaving $2,000 for which to play) which would’ve guaranteed the guy in first about $13,600, the next one about $9,700, and third place a little more than $8,000. Meanwhile, the scheduled payouts at that point were $15,184.64, then $11,051.44, then $7,170.05. (“ICM” numbers -- also an option -- were not discussed.)

The players in the top two positions were amenable to the proposed payouts, but the guy in third said he figured the $800 or so difference between third-place money and what he’d be guaranteed with the deal wasn’t enough to justify going with the chop. “I might as well take my chances,” he typed, and as it happened he’d end up finishing in third shortly thereafter.

Watching this play out, my first thought was that he was right to refuse the deal, even though it ended up costing him the $800 or so. If he had taken it and then come back to win, he still would have earned less than second-place money. Was kind of an interesting spot, I thought, given that the tournament really had reached a stage where it had become an all-in-or-fold affair and thus the skill component had been minimized, yet for the third-place player a deal still seemed like a less than attractive option to take.

Not being that well-versed in deal-making -- and perhaps because I’m also somewhat risk-averse, relatively speaking -- I usually watch these deals play out and think it often better to take guaranteed money than chance losing out, although I know there are often various dynamics in play that can make it less favorable or even incorrect to take a deal. Thus did I find it interesting to watch this one and find myself siding with the guy holding out.

What do you think? Would you have held out, too, if you’d been in the third-place player’s position?

(Title, of course, from Frank Zappa’s “The Torture Never Stops.”)

Wot’s... Uh the Deal?

Spent yesterday afternoon mostly watching hoops while tracking some of the Sunday action on PokerStars.

Had that Daniel Negreanu-Viktor “Isildur1” Blom “SuperStar Showdown” up for its duration, and was certainly intrigued to see how it played out, with Blom “knocking out” Negreanu by taking his entire $150,000 before they could even complete the 2,500 hands. (See Change100’s recap for details.)

Meanwhile, I was also following the Sunday Warm-Up yesterday while watching all of the ACC teams -- UNC, Duke, and Florida State -- win their games. Unsurprisingly, some hoops talk ended up sneaking into my recap post. Found its way into the table talk, too, as it happened.

When the Warm-Up got down to four players (the “Final Four,” natch), those remaining agreed to discuss terms for a possible chop and the tourney was paused. Not too unusual, although more often these deals happen with only two or three left.

At that point two of the players were well out in front -- one with over 21 million chips, the other with 16 million -- while the other two were both sitting with between 6-6.5 million. I believe the blinds were 200,000/400,000 at the time. As generally happens, the moderator came on and proposed what are usually referred to as “chip chop” numbers.

In the case of the Sunday Warm-Up, $10,000 is taken out of the prize pool, and then a calculation is made to redistribute the remaining prize money. In this case, there was about $413K left to be split between the four. The “chip chop” involves taking out last-place money and giving it to each player (here that was fourth-place money, or $56,703.40), then redistributing the remaining cabbage according to the percentage of chips each player has at the time the deal is made.

This method ensures that everyone gets more than what they’d get if he or she were to be the next player eliminated, although some believe it results in some less than fair distributions, especially if one player happens to have a big chip lead at the time.

It should be noted that this “chip chop” method is not the same as the “ICM” (Independent Chip Model) method sometimes used for deal-making, a method some believe to be fairer. I’m not going to try to sort out the distinctions between the two models here, but here’s a poster over on Two Plus Two -- one who prefers the ICM model -- who does a good job explaining how they are different, if you’re curious.

Anyhow, last night when these four started looking at the proposed “chip chop” figures, the big stacks liked them, but the short stacks didn’t. Ultimately they weren’t able to compromise and play continued. When one was eliminated the remaining three tried again, but once more the short stack kept asking for more, and again no deal was struck. It was only when they reached heads-up that a chop was finally made.

Nothing too unusual about all that, really. For a variety of reasons, deals don’t always go down. However, a couple of things popped up during the failed deals that stood out.

One was that “hoops talk” I mentioned above. With four left, one of the short stacks -- the one most insistent on wanting more from the deal -- didn’t help matters much by mentioning how he’d lost a lot betting NCAA basketball yesterday and as a result needed more money. Guy even went so far as to say he’d place the extra dough on San Diego State in their upcoming Sweet 16 game versus Connecticut and share his winnings with the others.

Serious or not, the offer wasn’t received well. In fact, it had the effect of making the others think he was pretty much out to lunch, thus hurting the chances of any sort of compromise occurring.

Something else came up in the chat last night that also perhaps represented the kind of miscommunication that made a deal less likely to go down. Both of the chip leaders kept referring to the proposed numbers as “ICM numbers” even though that wasn’t the method being used. They’d insist that the figures proposed by the moderator were “the official ICM numbers,” adding “there is no way u gonna get more than ICM says this is the most fair model.”

The basketball-betting short stack kept coming back with his own figures, noting “me friend say ICM wrong,” and it actually wasn’t until the second round of negotiations (with three left) that the moderator clarified that the proposed figures were not, in fact, derived using ICM.

For those of us reporting on it all, the deals can sometimes be a bit tedious. Sometimes, though, the deal talk becomes the most interesting part of the final table. In any case, I am often amazed at the wildly varying degrees of preparedness and/or knowledge players demonstrate when it comes to the specifics of deal-making.

Occasionally causes weird stuff to happen. Just like in the NCAAs.

Was caught between that post title and a Zappa lyric -- "That’s what’s the deal we’re dealing in" -- but decided on the Floyd one. Such a pleasant tune...

On Deal-Making; or, Everybody Wants a SCOOP

Another late one last night. Or this morning, I should say. Then I had to do some stuff at the “day job” where I have a few last tasks to perform over the next week or so. All of which means I’m one tired gumshoe at present. The schedule lightens up a little looking ahead, though, especially once I am finally, completely done with the other.

These first two long shifts of helping cover the Spring Championship of Online Poker over on PokerStars both ended with my witnessing some end-of-tourney final table deals, as frequently happens at these things. Can get a little tedious sometimes, especially if you’re there on the rail waiting for the sucker to end and more than 24 hours since yr last snooze.

Had fun yesterday tweeting a little back and forth with Jessica Welman while one deal was being discussed. She was also up late covering SCOOP (and FTOPS, too, I believe). I proposed they should start including the reporters in such deals. I said I thought I deserved a little extra cabbage, too! She said she thought she was probably too tired to negotiate properly.

Speaking of the negotiations, I wanted to share what seemed like a sharp contrast between two such deals -- one on Monday morning, the other from this a.m.

The Monday one came in one of the “High” buy-in events and involved three players. A damn lot of money on the table -- around $640,000 total. This trio actually made three different attempts at negotiating a settlement before finally coming to terms. Probably an hour total was spent on the process, as the tourney had to be manually paused each time, then calculations made, then the talk.

Since I had nothing better to do, I, too, did a few calculations while I watched. In one instance, one player had almost exactly half the chips in play (a tad over 49%), one about a third (34%), and the other about a sixth (17%). If I recall correctly, there was still a ton of play left in this one, as even the short stack had more than 60 BBs, I believe.

Here the short-stacked guy somewhat surprisingly proposed an even split of the remaining cash (leaving $20,000 left for which to play, as the tourney’s rules stipulated). Needless to say, the other two scoffed at that notion. But the short-stacked guy kept pressing the issue, trying to characterize their stacks as basically even, and also pointing out that he was a highly ranked online player (in a major poker publication) and so believed he had a significant edge over the other two.

Was interesting to see this line of argumentation taking place. I’ve seen it before, with fairly well known online guys using that status as a kind of bargaining chip when negotiating deals.

Anyhow, that line wasn’t working here, and it wouldn’t be until much later -- when the formerly short-stacked guy had in fact taken over the chip lead -- that they were able to agree to a slightly modified “chip-chop” (i.e., dividing what was left to be determined from the remaining prize pool between them according to their current stack sizes, minus the $20K). The discussion was quite rancorous, in fact, with a few epithets thrown about by one of the players toward the other two. And when they seemed at an impasse over exactly $2,000 (of the $620,000 they had to divide), the whole thing did appear from the rail to be fairly unpleasant and perhaps a little absurd.

Contrast that with what I saw this morning at the end of one of the “Low” events. This was Event No. 3, the six-handed no-limit hold’em event with rebuys that cost only $5.50 to enter. There were four players remaining, each of whom had perhaps invested no more than $15-20 in the sucker, and there was about $107,000 left to be split among them.

Thanks to the 24,000-plus entrants and all of the rebuys/addons, there was something like 275 million chips in play. The blinds were up to 1 million/2 million (with a 250,000 ante), and all four players had between 60-80 million in their stacks.

Now I don’t know if any of these four were highly ranked online players, but I doubt it. More likely all were thrilled to be hitting such a huge score, which may well have been the biggest ever for each. Once the idea of making a deal was proposed, one player immediately suggested they just split $100K of the remaining money, leaving almost $7K for which to play.

All four immediately assented, recognizing perhaps the fact that despite all those chips they were actually all down to 30-40 BB, and that in fact even a 20-million chip difference didn’t amount to much.

Was fun to watch the deal go down so smoothly. As well as to see four clearly happy campers by that point, sort of giddy there some 18 hours after the tourney had begun and realizing they’d managed what was probably something like a 125,000% ROI.

I have no grand generalizations to add to this here comparison. I will say it wasn’t surprising to see the bigger prize pool appear to cause bigger headaches when it came to striking a deal. Could’ve also just been the personalities involved, though. If you’re curious, here’s the recap for the first (“High” one) and here’s the one for the second (the “Low” one).

2008 WSOP, Day 10: Let's Make a Deal

“Be sure to take the jokers out.”

That’s what I told the men in vests, those WSOP event staff persons who were helping set everything up for yesterday’s Event No. 11 final table, including unwrapping new packs of cards that would be used in the event. This was Round 3 of the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout, a six-handed final table that culminated in Phil “The Chairman” Tom defeating Greg “FBT” Mueller heads up for the $477,990 first prize.

To be accurate, that actually was not the amount Tom won last night, even though that was the amount I reported when filing my narrative of the final hand. When play got down to three-handed, the remaining players cut a deal, apparently dividing the remaining prize money evenly (or close to evenly, anyway). That meant Tom, Mueller, and third-place finisher Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert took home about $321,000 apiece (or thereabouts).

We didn’t report the deal-making, for no other reason than we didn’t catch it when it happened. My partner Steve and I had been too preoccupied trying to get every hand of the final table reported (we did), and didn’t pick up on what was going on when the three briefly discussed terms while cards were still being dealt. After it was all over, though, I realized the significance of that discussion the final three had had earlier on when I overheard Mueller telling Tom he’d already settled with Wolpert.

Ended up being another short evening, as the final table was over and done within seven hours or so. It took over 100 hands for the first bustout, but they were all through by Hand #176. Heads up lasted 17 hands. Mueller, at about a 2-to-1 chip disadvantage when heads up began, seemed to limp in just about every single hand when he had the button, preferring to see flops than to apply any kind of pressure on his less experienced opponent playing out of position. Tom, meanwhile, played a pretty solid game, really ramping up the pressure once they got to three-handed.

(Tom, by the way, is the father of Scott Tom, the former Vice President of Operations and/or CEO of Absolute Poker whose name repeatedly came up in connection with the “super-user” cheating scandal at that site last fall.)

I do think the deal affected how the poker was played at the end of the final table. I’d been kidding about the jokers, of course. Was interesting, though, to witness the players taking control there at the end and not allowing the 52 cards to determine where the cabbage went.

I’m off today, resting up before starting my coverage of tomorrow’s Event No. 19, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event.

Back later.