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Chop At The Venetian
Bonuses, 2007-07-06, by Ozone
I played the Venetian's $1,000 tournament today. Their tournaments have absolutely impeccable structure. At one point, with about a dozen players left, my stack was 150 big blinds. A stack that huge is almost unheard of in live tournament poker.
Anyway, just 68 players showed up for the event. When we got down to 6, someone suggested we make a chop. First was scheduled at $21k, sixth at $4k. At this point, I was the shortstack in the tournament (but still had 15 big blinds, so I wasn't entirely desperate).
Two of the other five players said they were registered to play the Main Event tomorrow. At this point, it was almost 2:00 am, so they clearly didn't want to be awake for much longer. Some of the others were kinda nitty and just wanted to chop to get a guaranteed $10,000 or whatever. Realizing that I had a huge position of leverage against these guys, I basically negotiated a chop-deal that got me $9,000, which was the same as two other guys both of whom had twice as many chips as me!
After the tournament director ran the numbers for the chip-count payouts, everyone was like "agree, agree, agree, agree, agree," then it got to me. I had been sitting there in complete silence the whole time the director was calculating the numbers. When it was my turn to speak, I said "I need $10,000 to stop playing." By the chip counts, I was only entitled to $7,500. The other players were clearly miffed at me since, in their minds, the deal was all but done.
After some bantering, I interrupted and said, "okay, listen, basement offer, I'm not going any lower, I'll chop if I can get $9,000, otherwise we play." They talked amongst themselves and worked out an arrangement to meet my request. The six of us got $12,000 (chipleader who had over three times as many chips as I did!!), $9,300, $9,300, $9,300, $9,000, and $9,000.
At one point during the discussion, one of the players said to me "what makes you think you should get as much of a prize as us? You don't even have that many chips." The chipleader intervened on my behalf and said, "uhh, because he's better than you at poker." That made me giggle.
Finally, although clearly unhappy with the situation, everyone agreed on the chop and I walked out with basically the same payout as three players that all had me dominated in the chip count. It was a really sweet feeling.
An even sweeter feeling is that not once in the entire tournament did I have to survive an all-in. I was basically able to build up a stack by winning a lot of small pots and calling all-ins from shortstacks with premium starting hands that held up. It was one of the best tournaments I've played in my life. Having the desire to end on a high note, I'm going to take the next three days off and go into the Main Event on Monday with the confidence today's tournament instilled.
Anyway, just 68 players showed up for the event. When we got down to 6, someone suggested we make a chop. First was scheduled at $21k, sixth at $4k. At this point, I was the shortstack in the tournament (but still had 15 big blinds, so I wasn't entirely desperate).
Two of the other five players said they were registered to play the Main Event tomorrow. At this point, it was almost 2:00 am, so they clearly didn't want to be awake for much longer. Some of the others were kinda nitty and just wanted to chop to get a guaranteed $10,000 or whatever. Realizing that I had a huge position of leverage against these guys, I basically negotiated a chop-deal that got me $9,000, which was the same as two other guys both of whom had twice as many chips as me!
After the tournament director ran the numbers for the chip-count payouts, everyone was like "agree, agree, agree, agree, agree," then it got to me. I had been sitting there in complete silence the whole time the director was calculating the numbers. When it was my turn to speak, I said "I need $10,000 to stop playing." By the chip counts, I was only entitled to $7,500. The other players were clearly miffed at me since, in their minds, the deal was all but done.
After some bantering, I interrupted and said, "okay, listen, basement offer, I'm not going any lower, I'll chop if I can get $9,000, otherwise we play." They talked amongst themselves and worked out an arrangement to meet my request. The six of us got $12,000 (chipleader who had over three times as many chips as I did!!), $9,300, $9,300, $9,300, $9,000, and $9,000.
At one point during the discussion, one of the players said to me "what makes you think you should get as much of a prize as us? You don't even have that many chips." The chipleader intervened on my behalf and said, "uhh, because he's better than you at poker." That made me giggle.
Finally, although clearly unhappy with the situation, everyone agreed on the chop and I walked out with basically the same payout as three players that all had me dominated in the chip count. It was a really sweet feeling.
An even sweeter feeling is that not once in the entire tournament did I have to survive an all-in. I was basically able to build up a stack by winning a lot of small pots and calling all-ins from shortstacks with premium starting hands that held up. It was one of the best tournaments I've played in my life. Having the desire to end on a high note, I'm going to take the next three days off and go into the Main Event on Monday with the confidence today's tournament instilled.
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