Chopping a tournament prize pool

We played a live game {charity} on Sunday. The buy-in was $200 and there were 22 players. 80% return puts the prize pool at $3520.00. 1st paid $1400, 2nd was $700, 3rd was $600, 4th was $500 and 5th was $320.

There were six players left, when one of the players tried to co-ordinate a split. One player had 3 times everyone elses stack and the other 5 were basically even. The proposed split went like this.

1st gets $1000
and the rest get $500 Twenty went back to the charity.
This would've paid the top 6 spots after about 6 hours of play.

All did not agree on the split. Would any of you agree to this?? I'll tell you how it shook out later.

i wouldn't have wanted the split either. the only person who would have made out is the person who went out first. if i feel i am a little better than some of my opponents i would want to continue play. i would only take a split if i was an under averaged stack and felt all the players were as good as me or better.

I've never agreed to a chop. This one doesn't seem fair at all to the chip leader. If I'm him, I say no.

One reason I wouldn't do it at that point is redistributing the prize pool. It opened with 5 paid places, not 6. At the most, when many of the players may know each other, a 6th place of returning the buy-in can be negotiated and I've seen that done many times, but no reason to make it a 6 place payout, with 5 equal spots.

It's also asking the chip leader to take a nearly 30% cut from 1st prize, especially if s/he felt they could make it all the way.

Doesn't sound like a negotiation that would fly anywhere most of the time. I would have voted a 'no', but would have agreed to a 6th place buy-in refund that would have cost each remaining player only $40.

Its not even that much money I mean, play the tournament out lol its only 22 people!

Asking to split that is like, really really dumb.

Exactly monoxide, why not just have everyone sit down and split the money right at the start... kind of invalidates the reason to play IMO...If it's a massive tourney with a big payout and their are a few people left, thats one thing, this is something a little different.

ICM-wise:

1st - $955

rest - $641

So yeah if I'm 1st I take it (unless we're deep and I have a huge skill edge in which case I say no. The better my opponents are and the higher the blinds are in relation to the stack make me more likely to take the chop) and in all other spots I say no.

But what Monoxide said. You're going to do a chop to make sure you don't lose out on like a buy-in in equity? It's one thing if it's a ton of people and the difference between 1st and 2nd is like 100 buy-ins, but the worst beat you can take here only drops you down a buy-in or two. If you can't handle the variance at this final table why play a tourney with this buy-in at all?

btw this is the reason we should almost always chop when we're the chip leader and deep in a big mtt against people who don't understand icm. No offense to anyone here but you notice that most of the people responding here mistakenly thought that this chop would be unfair to the chip leader, when in reality the chip leader is the only one to benefit. If I ever do make it deep in the warmup or million and am chip leader at the final table I will almost definitely look for a chop with people who think like you guys do and get a huge jump in equity just from opponents who don't understand the math behind tourneys.

I am not convinced we have enough info here to make a decision. The size of the blinds figures into it. Do we have enough chips left to play some poker ? Or is it going to be a card-catching contest if we continue ?

Edit: I agree with Zach here (he posted while I was typing also). If I am chip leader, I am very tempted by this deal, especially if we are short stacked and there is going to be a big random element in playing on.

nooo noo way..... unfair to chip leader..........

What is your reasoning for that statement ?

Ok heres what happened...
The chip leader said "No Way, the only person to benefit would be the person getting 6th place." I didn't try to make the deal, someone else at the table did. So, I listened for a few. The same guy, guess he thought he was speaking for the table, then announces "OK we'll give you $1200 and we'll split the rest [$460 each]" Thats when I said " No Way" lol. I also thought the best deal was the first one offered.

The big stack ended up winning, then smugly says "See thats why I didn't split" LOL....I tried to explain to him that it was a good deal, but nevertheless. I think we've all had games where we thought we had it in the bag, then choked it up...lol. It just didnt happen this time, no matter how hard I prayed for it. I finished fourth for $500 and was happy with that.

All in all it was a good tourney and we had a guy named Paul Matteo show up with a couple of friends. http://www.pokerpages.com/players/pr...aul-matteo.htm
He plays in alot of these Charity tournies and should be commended for it. He busted out about 12th and one of his guys bubbled.

either you chop by chipcount (and hold some back 4 the winner) or you dont chop...
and I wouldnt chop b4 the bubble...but thats just me...
aC