| At some time during your poker
playing life you’ll find yourself in a situation where someone will want to make a
deal at a final table. First off, you should realize that under no circumstances should
you make a deal if you don’t want to. Never let the coaxing of the other players
force you into a deal if you’d rather play it out. The easiest way to deal with deal
making is to never make one. If you are interested in
dealing off the remainder of the prize pool you need to make sure you’re getting your
fair share. You should be getting an equal percentage of the remaining prize pool as the
percentage of the total of chips in the tournament that you have in front of you. If you
have 20% of the total chips you get 20% of the total prize pool. This is the fairest way
because everyone gets what they’ve earned.
Not so fair is to chop the remaining prize in equal amounts
for the remaining players. This would only make sense when all the players remaining have
close to equal stacks. It’s not a common deal until the number of players gets below
four. Don’t get talked into this deal if you have more than 20% of any
opponent’s stack, but it’s fine if you have less than anyone else.
Whether you make a deal or not should be decided based on
how you compare to the skill level of your opponents. If you’re sitting with a bunch
of pros you might want to take a deal. If you’re playing your friend’s
girlfriend head-to-head in a home game you might want to play it out. |
