Tournament Chop Etiquette

I read a story the other day about chopping up the prize pool at the end of a big mtt, and it reminded me of something that I have been through a couple of times myself and which I've seen other bloggers address in their blogs from time to time as well: the bragadoccio that goes on in chopping negotiations at the end of big tournaments.

Let's go back a few years first, to the first time I won the 50-50 tournament on full tilt. I distinctly recall as we got down to the final 3 or 4 players remaining, discussions of a chop were raised by one of the players (possibly me), and a fairly active debate ensued before we ended up throwing in the towel and just playing on. One player in particular -- the guy who was a close second in chips at the time behind only myself -- was very difficult to get involved in any chop, because he simply was not willing to give up hardly anything from the top prize amount. Why, you may ask, since he was not even the chip leader at the time? Because, as he repeatedly explained it to everyone else still alive in the tournament, he was the best tournament player remaining and thus, despite his non-chip-leading stack, he actually had the best chance of winning the tournament outright.

To be honest, I dismissed this as the ranting of pompous-ass douchebag, opted to decline any further chop discussions shortly after I heard it, and went on to win the tournament and the 11k first prize. And to tell the truth, I didn't really think about it again. At the time I definitely remember being very taken aback by another player at the table trying to take advantage of the others remaining in the tournament by his unjustified claim of being "better", but that part of the story quickly faded from my memory as is often the case when you throw in 11k of cashish to help wash away the negative memories.

Fast forward now to last summer, at the final table of the $540 Venetian Deep Stack event where I recorded my largest ever poker tournament score. With eight players left at the final table, an older Asian guy a few seats to my right with the 5th place stack (admittedly, 3rd through 5th were all fairly close at the time) suggests we consider chopping, and then proceeds to be far and away the biggest barrier to getting a chop done because he insists on getting at least $35,000, which was roughly the average of 2nd and 3rd place money according to the payout schedule for the tournament. I calmly asked him how he can possibly expect to get nearly 2nd place money with a 5th place stack and eight players remaining in any tournament, and he just as calmly fires right back at me, "Because I'm the best player at this table." Immediately I heard those deja vu bells going dingalingaling in my head and I was immediately reminded of my experience when discussing the 50-50 chop a few years earlier.

Once we got down to six players left at the Venetian -- after the cocky Asian dude had busted in 6th place and stormed off in anger with his 9k payout -- we tried to chop, and once again we tried when five players were left, but at this point with angry Asian man gone, it was the chip leader who held up our chances of a chop, and he unabashedly informed us as he insisted on about 150% of the second place payout to agree to a chop that he has several five-figure scores this year online in poker tournaments and that he knows he is the best, most experienced player at the table and thus would not be willing to settle for something much less than the first-place payout which he in his own warped mind claims to know he is going to win anyways.

Every time I have heard someone say this in mtt chop discussions, my immediate reaction is total revilement. It's seriously repulsive to me for one person to tell three or four other guys who have just made it through 20+ hours of no-limit, one-mistake-and-you're-dead poker that he is definitively better than they are and that he therefore deserves the lion's share of the remaining prize pool. I mean, by definition everyone who is left in the final few spots of a large mtt has performed great over the course of the tournament and is clearly playing great poker. Poker tournaments are so much based on in-the-moment decision-making and trends that ultimately I don't even think there is much to be said for "overall tournament skill" in the context of discussions around chopping up the prize pool in a single particular tournament. Plus, and this is just my opinion here, but I think you come off sounding like a total and complete goofball, pompous, horse's ass if you tell a bunch of guys who've been battling it out in the same game and have survived with you for days on end that you are somehow "inherently" better than them and thus deserve more consideration. Does anyone ever fall for this line?

With me, ultimately the proof is in the pudding. Because, make no mistake about it, at every final table I have ever been at, ever -- including major online series like FTOPS and UBOC, $200 weekly online majors, nightly online events and otherwise, as well as several live events in casinos around the U.S. -- I haven't just thought I was the best player there, I've known I was the best player there. Every single time. And if you read here often then you know I am always willing to discuss a fair chop given how luck-based late final table can be in the largest mtt's. And yet, you won't have caught me dead ever even trying to argue to anyone that I deserve more than my fair share of the prize pool according to my chip stack, because I somehow have some extra skill advantage over everyone else. In a discussion about how much to chop a prize pool by, that just doesn't seem like a relevant consideration to me.

The bottom line from my viewpoint is simple: Perceived poker tournament skill differential can make a lot of sense in deciding not to chop and instead to play it out for all the marbles. If you think you're better than everyone else, then play the tournament out, and win it. Take the first prize money that you believe your superior skill will bring you at any final table. But once you've decided to entertain the thought of a chop, the larger stacks will simply need to give up money to the smaller stacks if they wish to secure one of the larger payouts, or the notion of a chop will never work no matter how good the individuals involved think they are. Something about trying to agree to a chop only if it steals money from others in favor of you because of your alleged superior overall poker "skill" just rubs me the wrong way.

The Chopping Block

I had an interesting experience with chopping a tournament recently, and I wrote this post at the time but am just completing it now. Earlier this year I played in a no-limit tournament in a casino with a large poker room where they regularly run tournaments. It was a $200 buyin event, and it was fairly small, more like a multi-table sitngo than an actual mtt, with I believe 58 entrants, give or take a few. Long story short, I end up at the final table with around an average stack, and then I pick up a couple of big hands, run a huge bluff, and before you know it I'm sitting in 2nd place with just a few players remaining. For some reason, I never seem to be able to bust out the third place guy when I am heads-up, and the same held true here as my opponent across the table knocked him out to come into heads-up play with me with him holding about a 2-to-1 chip lead.

2-to-1. It sounds like a big number. I mean, it means he had literally almost twice as many chips as I have. In this thing I think there were just under 600k total chips in play (approximately 58 runners and 10k starting stacks), so it was something like 370k to 210k as we started to play, and you could just tell this guy thought he was killing it. The look on his face said it all -- he kind of knows how to play the game, but in truth he cannot believe he is sitting here playing heads-up for the $2150 first prize. He's played so well, it's never been in doubt for him today, and now he's come into heads-up with a monster stack. He is the best player in the casino on this day, and he just knows it.

Which is why, when I suggested that we discuss a chop, the guy chuckled. Out loud. He wasn't really being a dick I suppose -- he just honestly thought he had this in the bag and wasn't really considering doing any kind of a chop. The top two payouts were scheduled to be $2150 for first and $1350 for second, so he looks up at the tournament board on the closest television screen, considers the payouts for a minute or two, and then turns and offers me a chip chop. Meaning, we add up each of our percentage of the total chips in play, and then divide up the remaining prize pool according to that ratio.

Now, in theory I am not against this approach, but the bottom line is that it really only works well when you're heads up if the two stacks are fairly close. I mean, if the guy with 55% of the chips wants 55% of the prize pool, there might be some logic to both players agreeing to that split, since the chip leader will secure the "win" and the largest share of the prize money despite having very little actual advantage in the final result by virtue of his slightly increased chip stack. Meanwhile, the underdog will secure close to 1st place money in his own right, while holding less than half the chips in heads-up play and probably in line for more like a third of the total prize pool for the top two spots if left as is. In my case, I had already told my opponent earlier at the final table that I was not opposed to a chop based on our chip counts, but again that was at a different time, with still multiple players left at the table, and with very different chip stacks. At this point, I explained to the guy that applying this formula would lead to a ridiculous result, and he started getting belligerent with me. In fact, he would so not listen to what I was trying to say that we ended up having the TD run the numbers on the chip chop so that we could have them right in front of us to help make explanations and negotiations easier.

In a nutshell, with payouts of $2150 and $1350 scheduled to go to the top two finishers, I was already guaranteed to win at least $1350 with no chop at all. However, I had 210k chips to his 370k, giving me roughly 36% of the chips in play, while my opponent held 64%. This would mean that, if we chose to do an exact "chip chop", he would take 64% of the total $3500 prize pool for the top two spots, and I would take 36%. This translates to a chop of $2240 for him, and $1260 for me. The guy just kept arguing and arguing that he was crushing me, he had twice as many chips so he should just twice as much of a payout if we chop it up. Finally, when the TD literally wrote the numbers down and put the paper right on the table in front of me and my opponent, I tried to show him why it makes less than zero sense for me to agree to the chip chop: I would guarantee myself less money ($1260) than I was already guaranteed under the tournament's original payout schedule ($1350)!!

When finally confronted with the numbers right in front of his face, it seemed to finally start to sink in with this guy that there was no way I was going to agree to a straight chip chop at a time when he had a bigger percentage of the total chips than the payout schedule awards to the top finisher over 2nd place. It would literally never make sense to agree to this kind of a chop in this situation -- as I tried to explain to the guy, I wouldn't agree to a straight chip chop even if our stacks were a little closer, such that I was guaranteed $1350 for 2nd place is it stands, but with a chop I could guarantee myself slightly more, say $1450 or something. For only a lousy extra hundred bucks, I would much rather push allin blind on the next five hands and try for the quick random double-up or die trying and take my $1350 in the first place. For this reason, and of course due to the fact that I knew that even at down 370k to 210k, I was just one double-up away from a huge chip lead of close to 3-to-1 myself, I told the guy after finally getting my point across about the chip chop that I would be willing to agree to chop the remaining $3500 only for $1850 for him and $1650 for me, or else we should just play it out. He kinda sneered at me and said "let's shuffle up and deal then!". And so we did.

First hand, I found KTs and, really not caring much at this point, pushed allin before the flop. He folded. On the second hand after the failed chop, my opponent raised it up 3x before the flop, and I instantly pushed allin again when I looked down to find A8, also suited. He thought it over for a decent while with a pissed off look on his face, and then eventually folded his hand again. I pointed out to him that, with the blinds having just escalated yet again a couple of hands earlier, that I was now probably close to 90% of his chip stack if he wanted to just agree to an even chop of $1750 each. Insulted, he immediately rebuffed my offer and we dealt out a third hand. AJo for me, and I pushed allin once again, and my opponent folded with another frustrated look on his face.

As the dealer mixed up the cards for the fourth deal, I saw my opponent's eyes drop down to my stack, then back to his. Having already prepared for this moment, I let him know that I was now just 20k behind him in chips, meaning that we were currently sitting at approximately 300k to 280k. I once again urged him to agree to an even chop, and as the dealer set to start the deal, he blurted out "OK, I'll take the deal, let's just chop this up!" I confirmed we were splitting the payout evenly, and he agreed, commenting that "it just doesn't make sense to play it out at this point". A sentiment with which I totally agreed, don't get me wrong. But the guy cost himself a few hundy by not agreeing to a more fair chop just four hands earlier.

I've seen this happen many, many times at final tables of mtts, both live and online, at really all buyin levels. Invariably, the guy with the biggest stack at the table -- and this phenomenon is generally worse with the fewer the number of players remaining in the tournament -- but the biggest stack pretty much always feels entitled to more of the prize pool than he probably deserves. They always seem to feel like their chip lead is insurmountable, this despite the pressure of the blinds on the short stacks, the low Ms across the board, and the resulting tremendous influence that luck will have on the final results. In my experience, ranging from chopping up the $3 buyin mtt's on pokerstars way back when and all the way up even to my final table at the Venetian Deep Stack last summer with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line -- the top stack almost always overestimates his chances of winning the tournament and rarely ever wants to give up enough to make a chop worth it for the other players.

Similarly, as surely as the big stack will overestimate his chances of winning the tournament outright, I am also not sure I have ever participated in discussions to chop at a final table where the proposals are for the most part rejected by the shortest stacks, in particular when there are more than two or three players remaining in the event. Just as the big stack never seems to be willing to give up enough from the first prize money, the group as a whole never seems to be willing to give the short stacks enough to get them out of the same situation I was in with this guy at heads-up earlier this year. And if the stakes get big enough, this phenomenon with the short stacks is only magnified. Take my Venetian final table last year, for example -- I distinctly remember several failed chop discussions happening in that thing, starting from probably with 8 players left and going on all the way down, pretty much after every single bustout. And mostly every time, the remaining short stacks were not even close to agreeing to what was being proposed. Sure, with 6 players left, 6th place was slated to pay probably about 9k, and the chop being proposed was offering 11k to those players with the shortest stacks, and 11k is appreciably better than 9k for sure, both in percentage terms as well as absolute terms. But, when with one lucky double-up or one pocket Aces these guys could immediately jump to a stack that would put them in line for a 20-30k payout let alone a shot at the 101k first prize, why would they agree to give up potentially 100k in lost wins just to secure an extra $1500 or $2000 right now? The bottom line is, most of the time, the short stacks with multiple players left don't agree with this, and they won't.

As I have discussed (and shown) here several times in my day, I am always willing, if not looking to, chop a tournament when the stacks are shallow, the blinds are soaring and the stakes are worth caring about. But any chop will need to make sense to all the players involved, and invariably the greatest pressure points are focused on the extremes -- the largest and the smallest stacks remaining in the tournament. The bottom line is that, since the winner typically nabs such a huge percentage of the prize pool in his payout, the guy with the chip lead will by definition have to be by far the guy who gives up the most absolute dollars in any big chop, and typically those give-ups will flow mostly in absolute terms to the smallest stacks remaining in the event, who will need to be adequately compensated for giving up a chance to get back into the thick of things for the top payouts. Ultimately with experience I have learned that no chip lead is nearly as safe as you think once you're down to short-handed play with small Ms and a lot at stake, but unfortunately not everyone you run into at your average casino final table will have much (if any) understanding of this important poker tournament concept.

Big, Big Score in the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza

Boom chacka lacka!!!! Last night I chopped the prize pool with the final four finishers in the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza $560 buyin nlh tournament for a cool 51k and change in Cold Hard Cash!!!

This is easily my biggest ever poker score, and I can honestly say that so much went on in this tournament that I have never, even been a part of before. I can't wait to post all about the experience, and really the crazy weekend I had here in Las Vegas overall this time around. I hung with some old blogger friends, met a few new ones as well, and had yet another amazing meal in one of my favorite restaurants in the world. But most of all, I played poker. Like a motherfucker. Nine or ten fruitless and frustrating hours of cash on Friday night / Saturday morning, and then what proved to be about 15 straight hours on Friday on Day One at the Venetian, followed by another 12 hours or so straight through on Sunday to get to the chop. In the end, after several frustrated and frustrating attempts, we finally got unanimous agreement on a chop -- something I was pushing hard for, mind you -- when down to four players remaining, and the four of us divided up the remaining $231,000 and change in the prize pool almost exactly according to chip stacks, leaving both me and the guy who had just a few hundred chips more than me each nabbing more than second place money, while the chip leader who had close to twice as many chips as 2nd and 3rd place took home 70 grand, and the fourth place guy agreed to 37k for his take in our four-way domination of the event.

I have so much to write about this, but right now is not that time as I have a million things to do today and still haven't slept or even come down to earth at all yet. This whole week I will probably spend reviewing the whole crazy trip to Vegas, from The Venetian tournament in separate posts for separate days, to some of the awesome perks we got this time as a result of my brother's -- shall we say "reputation" among the MGM/Mirage/Bellagio crowd based on his past experiences in their casinos, and of course, by popular demand, some discussion on my amazing meal at Prime in Bellagio, for the second year in a row. I want to cry that place is so great. But more on that later in the week. I promise I will be working on these posts all week and that I'll get each one up as soon as they are good and ready. I will try to target a post every day of the week like usual, but being that I will be on vacation with my family this week I don't want to make any guarantees.

51 grand, all to sit and play poker for 27 hours over two days. Whoever thought of this was a frigging genius.

A-List / B-List

It's an unfair advantage....Why?....

Because it's the friggin "Tournament of Champions" people, that's why. It's not the "Tournament of Champions and Dealmakers"....Imagine how LJ must feel after getting so close so many times or anyone else who finished 2nd for that matter. They just weren't fortunate enough i guess.

-- $mokkee, April 17, 2008


Congratz to Hoyazo* for the early Christmas gift. It must be fun to be given a seat instead of earning it like everyone else.

-- Waffles, April 17,2008


"I'm with StB on this... the seat wasn't won. IF they want to chop for money, do so. The seat should have gone to the winner. Shameful."

Comment posted by Luckbox 12:37 PM April 17, 2008 on STB's blog.


"If i get HU in another one of these and someone wants to chop and take 1st for the seat, i would consider taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd place money.........then say no

win it like a man."

Comment posted by $mokkee : 12:50 PM April 17, 2008 on STB's blog..


"I would really hate it though if the person who chopped in to the TOC ends up winning the TOC..."

Comment posted by RecessRampage : 12:50 PM April 29, 2008 on Schaubs's blog..

I'm Baaaaaaaaack

Wow!! Nothing like a little mononucleosis to set your priorities straight, let me tell you. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

Well, priority #1 of course is this:



So, here's the story of my past couple of weeks. Two Mondays ago, two weeks ago today in fact, my wife was out to dinner with her father and brother while I stayed home to sit for the sleeping kids. I ate dinner (a hamburger as I recall), watched some tv and sat down to play some online poker. At some point shortly before Mondays at the Hoy went off at 10pm ET, I started to feel sick. In fact, I remember having already agreed earlier that evening to a last-longer bet in the 50-50 with Chad, but then bagging on it like five minutes before the 9:30pm ET start time because, as I told Chad in the girly, I was feeling like ass all of a sudden. I still played the Hoy, and amazingly, I final tabled it. But I was feeling horrible. I felt like I have felt in the past when I've gotten a particularly strong bout of food poisoning, minus the digestive issues. I had a massive fever and strong headache, pretty much out of nowhere, and my whole body just felt weak. Food poisoning is the best analogy I can come up with right now to what it was like. Anyways, I was too effed up to even play my game for the most part, and there I was final tabling it anyways. It's just so poker isn't it? I may have written a post about it at the time, I don't remember. The whole first week is basically a complete blur as I look back on it.

Over Monday night I sweated like I have never sweated before. Like, I had to change my shirt in the middle of the night, and then again when I woke up. Believe me, I understand that is disgusting, and also believe me when I say I'm leaving most of the really gross symptoms I had out of this description, but the night sweats were one of the craziest parts of this entire thing as I look back on it. Tuesday morning I woke up from a night of night sweats feeling actually ok. I had taken some advil when I got up to change shirts during the night, and my raging hot fever had broken in the last few hours of the night. I figured finally, my food poisoning bout is over, and I went to work.

Unfortunately, by Tuesday afternoon I was feeling pretty bad again. I don't take my temperature as a rule, but one of my super powers has always been to know my own temperature within maybe a full degree, probably less. Anyways, I knew I was sporting a solid fever and I had that same weak-ass feeling again. In my muscles. In every muscle of my body at once. I trooped it out until 5pm and took off shortly afterwards. I was asleep probably 5 minutes after coming in the door, sleeping in my suit and everything. Fuck getting undressed.

Anyways, without going through the minutiae, Wednesday was basically the same as Tuesday. I had insane night sweats all Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, changed my shirt twice overnight, took some advil and woke up feeling ok. I went to the office but by afternoon was feeling feverish and shitty again, left at 5 and went straight to sleep. Finally on Thursday even the overnight shot of advil failed to do the trick, and I woke up with probably a 103 degree fever, a sweaty, confused and weak as shit mess. I called my office and said I wasn't coming in, but I worked my job from home. Same story on Friday, when Hammer Wife finally convinced me to go to the doctor. They spoke to me, took my temperature (102.3 as I recall, and trust me when I say I had cooled considerably from what my body was doing every night), checked my vitals and took some blood.

The weekend was spent with me sweating out the evenings in my bed -- completely ruining a fairly expensive mattress over the course of this whole thing btw -- and basically sleeping maybe 19, 20 hours a day otherwise. I could literally not walk the 30 feet to the bathroom without needing a nap. I didn't want to eat because, basically, it was literally too tiring to get out of bed and walk all the way to the kitchen. It was literally tiring on my mouth muscles to chew all that food. I would lie in bed psyching myself up for two hours just to get out of bed and walk to the family room to get something. It hurt so ungodly bad just to do anything other than lie down in bed, that this was when it occurred to me that I was probably dying. I had given blood at the doctor a week and a half ago on Friday, and over the weekend while I awaited the results that did not eventually come until Tuesday of last week, I spent a lot of time thinking. I honestly believed I was going to hear that I had cardiovascular disease, congestive heart failure, some stoopid shit like that. I spent hours thinking about my life, my family, and how I could let myself get sick like this and threaten losing everything if I can't get better. I was all kinds of fucked up, sick as a dawg physically and emotionally just beating myself up and really convincing myself I was dying.

Finally last Tuesday I got the results of my bloodwork -- I had the Epstein-Barr virus, more commonly known as mononucleosis. Yes, the kissing disease. That's me, kissing strangers all day. Now, my doctor refused to believe I could have mono, a disease only transmittable by direct saliva-to-saliva contact and therefore normally not contracted by thirtysomething married men. So she ran a bunch more tests, had me come in for an abdominal ultrasound, but in the end all that stuff proved negative. I have mono, regardless of how I got it. All my concern about the early termination of my life was wrong. And like I said above, I have got to tell you, that can give you some great fucking perspective on things. On blogging, on poker, on the relevance and the importance of these things in my overall life view. I learned some lessons over the past couple of weeks that I will never forget, I guarantee you that.

So yeah, I have the "kissing disease". Like I said, I would be the first to take credit if I had been kissing a bunch of strange women, but that is simply not the case. Hammer Wife made some faces at me and squawked a little bit about me having mono, she wanted to know how I would get something like that, etc. So I told her fine, I would be more than happy to submit to a polygraph exam regarding my recent activities. Hammer Wife seemed excited by the proposition of this. But then I let her know that my only condition is that the polygraph will be mutual, and I will be asking her the exact same questions that she wants to ask me in regard to my recent activities. I also made sure Hammer Wife knew that the scope of my inquiries regarding her activities would most definitely include why, unlike my older daughter, my younger daughter looks, acts and seems nothing like me at all and why she always calls our 85-year-old toothless doorman "daddy" every time she sees him. Interestingly, as soon as I made this clear, Hammer Wife quickly dropped the whole polygraph thing. So, as a result, you all are just going to have to trust me that I did not contract mono through kissing anyone with the disease, but somehow I got it nonetheless. My best guess? Some dude is making my turkey sandwich at the corner deli. He has mono, he sneezes into my sandwich, puts the top on, and three minutes later there I am eating the thing. Or, some dude with the Epstein-Barr virus puts his hand in his mouth and then on the subway pole. Four minutes later at my stop, he is gone and I step on to the train, and I hold the same pole in the same spot where his hand was. Then I have an itch at the corner of my mouth, and voila, there's your mono. It has to be something like that.

Anyways, at this point I will return to work this week after missing seven of the past eight days, although I worked from home, a full schedule, every single day while I was out. And I would not be returning to the office this week if I wasn't feeling a little bit better, a little bit stronger. Most of my symptoms have subsided or disappeared completely at this point which is great. That said, I am still tired as fuck. I go out for a short walk, or I go out to lunch, taking a cab both ways, for an hour, and when I get home I sleep for three hours in the middle of the day to make up for the lost energy that the trip costs me. I am still tired as shit. I haven't played a lick of online poker in nearly two full weeks now, other than the blonkaments where I felt a duty to donate and, basically play like a blogger for a change. So I've donked out immediately within 5 or 10 minutes in every single event, basically the first time I get any kind of top pair or two-overcard hand I just move allin or call allin and see what happens. It's been fun in a way, this playing like a blogger for a couple of weeks, though the results of course have been hideous. It's what I've needed. I'm only now getting to the point where I could even fathom staying up past midnight playing in any poker tournament, even from the comfort of my own bed, and frankly I'm still not sure I can really do it. But I plan to find out tonight at the MATH and see if I can play some real tournament poker for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of the MATH for a bit, congrats to last week's winner cmitch. Boy, the BBT3 Tournament of Champions got noticeably tougher last week, huh? With cmitch's win in the MATH and Surflexus storming his way in I believe the Skills Series last week, let's just say thank god that Lucko apparently did not chop with Columbo in last week's Mookie despite Lucko already having won two seats to the ToC, or that would have been three of the most fearsome names in the blonkaments all getting in to the ToC in the same week. As it is, adding cmitch and surf to the fray makes the entire thing that much more legitimate, and that much more difficult to win the big prizes.

Btw if you are here and have not yet read about Lucko's disgustingly huge news from the live tournament poker world this weekend, you are in the wrong place. Go read that first, then you can come back here after you know wtf is going on.

Anyways, I will note that there was yet another seat chop in the BBT last week. Of course, as on multiple occasions during the week we had the heads-up battle in a BBT tournament that included one player who had already won a seat. I want to thank again the very, very small few of you out there who did not make a peep the first time a seat was chopped in the BBT3 when it did not involve me, but then decided to create a huge ruckus suddenly the second time a seat was chopped, which miraculously was the time when I was involved. Acting like it was I who created the whole idea of chopping for a seat, blaming me for ruining the poker blogiverse. Then two players not including me chop again a couple of weeks later, and? [crickets chirping]. It's funny. I just continue to not only add new haters but to convert supporters into haters at a generous pace. What can I say, it's a gift.

Speaking of the BBT3 seat chops, there is a seriously delicious irony going on about the entire situation that's been complained about, and I haven't heard or read it anywhere although admittedly I've been completely out of commission from the blogiverse for a good couple weeks now while my body has been ravaged by the kissing disease. While a very small minority of people have publicly complained about the whole notion of chopping for a BBT Tourament of Champions seat, the essence of the complaints has been that declining to play it out is ruining the spirit of what these games were supposed to be for in the first place. These guys argue that the final two players should have to just play it out to the death, even if one player already has a seat, or for some other reason knows he can't use the ToC seat or simply values cash in hand more than the theoretical cash value of his entry into the ToC, and that anything else is ruining the "just have fun" spirit of our games.

What's happened in the end is a rash of people agreeing to sell the ToC seat in deals, but settling for less money than others personally value the ToC seat alone to be worth. I've heard the figure of $550 or some shit like that kicked around, and I think that figure is silly because a good half of the people currently in the ToC in my view have close to zero chance of cashing in one of the top four spots in the series-ending Tournament of Champions, and most of them know it. To think that a person who knows he isn't very strong at no-limit holdem, doesn't play against the bloggers enough to know anything about them individually, and/or already has a seat somehow assigns $550 worth of value to their freeroll "buyin" at the end of the ToC, simply reflects a lack of understanding of how most of these people think. And don't get me wrong, I feel ya on the $550 thing, if you want to argue what Lucko's or cmitch's or surf's "value" of their ToC entry is, and I'm fine with that (it is probably somewhat higher even, due to the half-the-field of dead money I described above), but that figure is redonkulous for most of the people agreeing to chops so far as far as I can tell.

Anyways, what the fair "value" of selling a ToC seat in a chop is isn't even the point I'm trying to make at all. Much the opposite -- I'm saying that value is irrelevant. And this is the delicious irony of the whole thing that I referred to above. The real reason people keep agreeing to sell ToC seats in chops for less than some people could argue the seat itself is worth is really quite simple: these people do get it. They get it maybe in a different way from those are oppose seat chops on principle, but look at what they're doing. These are people who have chip leads in some cases, or people who already have secured themselves a ToC seat, and they're agreeing to sell the seat to their heads-up opponent, and they're not even going to extort maximum dollar from them either! Can you believe it? Two people, part of the same group, participating in the same intra-group challenge where in the end it really is all supposed to be about Having Fun, and when they agree to chop, the person "in the lead" is even agreeing to a decent price to sell the seat.

How terrible! What a horrible outcome of the BBT! People within the poker blogging community are being nice to each other? What! Fellow poker bloggers moved by their nature and the nature of the greatness of the BBT to not require absolute maximum dollar from a fellow colleague in exchange for something of value? Greed not taking absolute precedence over all other ends in connection with the BBT? What an embarrassment to us all.

Of course, this whole notion is patently ridiculous. The bottom line is, this fine example from the chopping we have seen in the BBT is yet another example of why I am so proud to be a part of the BBT. I understand that this position makes me public enemy number one in the eyes of a small minority of the bloggers.

So the fuck what. A couple of weeks away while for a while there I honestly thought I was dying has really given me some fabulous perspective on this whole ghey thing we do. Guys, think whatever the fuck you want about me. Believe me when I say I don't give a fuck. I like to use the blog to speak my mind and that is gonna mean people aren't going to like me sometimes. I didn't used to believe this but after all the years I have accepted this as postulate #1 about being a blogger who people read. And I don't even judge people for it, I honestly don't. I'd love to meet up with every person who complained about me chopping a tournament and share a beer. Hell, I'll buy the beer for creating such negative feelings in you in the first place.

But anyways, I mean what I said, and now seems like a good time to clarify what I wrote a couple of weeks back about the BBT. I am proud as shit to be a part of the BBT, and to have really helped hatch the whole idea way back when in a drunken conversation in some bar at the Borgata with Al. I think I have been fully open from the beginning about my entire feelings on the BBT. That we can give away so much fucking great stuff to the bloggers -- absolutely free stuff I said -- and basically play the very same private tournaments we were going to play anyways, and do so rake-free on top of everything else, I mean it's the ultimate no-brainer. The BBT is the coolest thing that has come out of the world of poker blogging in the over three years I have been involved in the community. There's nothing else even close guys. The fact that we are right now playing for nearly $40,000 in free prizes and giveaways from full tilt, and again doing so in the very same tournaments I would have been playing every week anyways, for the past couple of months and will end up awarding seven bloggers with WSOP prize packages between April and July, that shit speaks for itself, and it does so with the loud and booming voice and someone who knows they are absolutely huge.

If some people don't like what the existence of a thing like the BBT has done to the spirit of our weekly private blogger-hosted tournaments, then so be it. As I've written about before, I feel them on that one. I've said it many times, but it definitely does I think pretty obviously change the nature of our games from a place to just Have Fun to a place where something serious is riding on the outcome. That's just the price we all pay to get all this crazy awesome free shit, thanks to Al and his incredible ability to sell what we're doing to the marketing heavies at full tilt. If you are someone who thinks the BBT on balance is a negative thing, then that is where you and I have diverged in our views. And I'm always one for respecting other people's viewpoints, and I feel that same way here. But I would suggest there is a reason that there appear to be about three or four people who feel that way, and about 250 people who think like I do, which is that the BBT kicks mega ass in such an obvious, self-evident way that it hardly even bears genuine discussion.

Yes, the BBT does impact the spirit of our games, and I think that changed nature of our weekly games weighs on most of us out there, myself definitely included as I have made no bones about over the past year on this blog. Do I think we should have all of our regular weekly blogger events be BBT tournaments for eight months over a 12-month span? No. I don't. But if I have given the impression that this means that I somehow think the BBT is "bad for bloggers", as Sean first asked me when I was on Live Poker Radio a few weeks back, then I just have to laugh. The BBT? Bad for bloggers? Huh? So we got 7k in free stuff last spring, and 20k in free stuff last winter. Now another 40k in free stuff this spring. Yeah. It's just terrible isn't it? What a truly recockulous notion, even for a blogger to conceive of. And let me tell you, that right there is really saying something.

I've said it before and I will say it again. The BBT is the single greatest thing to come out of or into the world of poker blogging in my three years plus of being intimately involved with this group. I understand that a very small group of others is unhappy with the effect on our weekly games that the seriousness of the BBT has brought, and to an extent, perhaps more than most of you, I understand that feeling and even experience it myself to a degree. But if you don't see that the trade-off is a hugely positive one on balance, then what else can I say? You and I have divergent opinions on that point, and that's just the way it is. I love the BBT and I still wake up most days in complete and utter disbelief that us bunch of donkeys somehow are being given away all this thousands and upon thousands of dollars of free shit, World Series of poker buyins, other major tournament entries, all this cash, everything, and all in exchange for just doing what we would dam well be doing anyways. Wow. Al truly is The Man.

Tomorrow, my Vegas plans.

Live Poker Radio, and BBT Chops

I had a fun time on Live Poker Radio last night with IT. It was totally unplanned, but IT hit me on the girly shortly before the Riverchasers started, and since there were some topical things to discuss I got on air and we just jumped right in to it. I was very pleased with the entire convo that I had on air and frankly had a really fun time doing it all as I always seem to. When IT tried to start talking about American Idol contestants, I just sidestepped that whole thing and drove the conversation right back to Poker where it belongs. When we discussed some of the controversial issues of the day, it seems like IT and I were in some disagreement over the details. But that's ok with me, I made my point and he made his, and we moved on.

The whole issue on chopping in the BBT is kind of a non-issue to me. As I said on air last night, it is obvious from some of the specific language used by some of the haters detractors that those people are not aware that chopping in the BBT is already standard accepted practice. To read some of these posts and comments, you would think that I, Hoyazo, have single handedly ruined poker bloggery and turned it into the drivel that it has become today, all by accepting a chop offered to me from a guy who could not play in the BBT3 Tournament of Champions anyways earlier this week. Of course those of us who have actually been involved at the end of some of these large-field BBT events know that chops have been discussed on several occasions, and they have even been agreed to more than once already, even in just the BBT2 and the BBT3 which were focused on a challenge-end Tournament of Champions. Heck, there was already a seat chop earlier in the BBT3, not some 3 or 4 weeks ago! And if memory serves, the same thing happened once or twice in the BBT2 as well.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not so naive as to be arguing that just because someone else did it in the past, that automatically means chops are awesome. I'm not saying that, and I don't even think it. But what I am saying is that, when this guy offered me the chop the other night, I accepted it without really thinking about the legitimacy of chopping up for a seat, because it's already been done on a couple of occasions in the last two BBT challenges. As I mentioned, it was done 3 or 4 weeks ago in the BBT3 for crying out loud. So to act like I have somehow done something to bloggers, to blogging, to Poker, whatever, merely by accepting another guy's offer for a chop at the end of a BBT tournament that we both expected me to win anyways, is the equivalent of you making trouble.

The biggest point I made on the radio last night was this. In the BBT3, the very people who have most vocally complained about what the BBT has done to the blogging community, have suddenly become the people doing the complaining that are threatening to ruin the spirit of our games. The same people who have posted numerous times on their blog about how the fun and jovial spirit of our private games has been sapped away with the growth of the group and the competition within it, now those are inexplicably the same people arguing that we must never allow a chop at the end of one of our BBT tournaments? Now our BBT events are too serious to even discuss a chop?

But I thought it was all about the friendships, and not taking things too seriously? I thought it was just a game, just an amicable poker game among friends? That people should not be taking these things so seriously, right? That it's not supposed to be all about winning and who played better than who. Right?

But now the notion of two of those amicable friends ever being able to chop at the end of a BBT tournament is worthy of words like "despicable" and "shameful"?

One thing is clear. Some people have clearly lost their way and are completely missing the spirit of the BBT and the private blogger tournaments. I guess the exact identity of those people we can disagree on.

Have a great weekend everyone. Don't forget to come by and donk it up tonight in the latest installment of Kat's donkament, the $1 rebuy extravaganza every Friday night at 9pm ET on full tilt. Password as always is "donkarama". As usual I'm not sure if I will be there. Yeah right.