Deal or No Deal

With the current poker boom in full swing and the number of players that are playing the game at an all time record high, tournament poker has never been so popular. With the World Poker Tour events being shown on our screens on a regular basis, not to mention a wide assortment of other tournaments, this interest is growing by the day and is reflected in the seemingly ever increasing size of the fields in some of these events.

For many, tournament poker is a new experience and some of these fields are so large that getting down to the final table and in particular the major money seats is quite an achievement these days. Despite what we see on television, it is common practice for players who get down to the final few places to agree some kind of a deal with the other players and this is in no way detrimental to the integrity of the game and is certainly not underhanded in any way.

Making deals is part and parcel of poker and poker tournaments especially. Deals are common for one very simple and important reason. That is that there is a great difference in the amount of prize money in the majority of tournaments between the winner and second, third and fourth places. Most of the deals in tournament poker take place with at the most, four players left although there are exceptions to this.

So just what are the mechanics behind deal making in tournaments? Offering or accepting a deal is by no means an easy decision to make. This is such a complex subject that it could really fill an entire book because nearly every player would offer or accept a deal differently to the next player. The reason for this is because you should really only offer to do a deal or to accept a deal when you perceive that it is to your advantage to do so.

A players own individual skill level and degree of confidence also have a lot to do with the decision making process and this is why no two players will operate the same way in this area. It takes a very good or a very bold player to resist deal making and especially as the blinds and ante’s start to escalate very rapidly towards the end of a tournament.

In No Limit Texas Hold’em, luck tends to be the deciding factor at the very end of these tournaments and even having a healthy chip lead is no guarantee of first place. A couple of bad beats later and that first place that you were hoping for and $100,000 suddenly turns into third place and only $20,000 and it is for this reason that deals are done. Most players fear luck turning against them and it is this fear that provokes someone to make an offer or to make an offer based on their perception of someone else’s fear.

Of course there is one thing that must be stated and that is that players are not compelled to make a deal and quite often the resistance of a single player scuppers a deal being made at the table. Some players never make the first move simply through machismo because offering a deal is perceived to be a potential sign of weakness. Many other players also hold out from offering deals because they feel that it puts them into a stronger position if they think that their opponents think that they are prepared to play to the death. Sitting back and letting somebody else make the first move could also be an indication of just who is feeling the pressure of the situation as well. It is this human emotional element that complicates the deal making procedure immensely.

Four players are left at a final table and three of them would like to do a deal but the chip leader is insisting that they play on. Why are they doing this, well it could be for a number of reasons. They could perceive that they are much superior to the opposition and that if they play on that they will win it all due to their healthy chip position. Maybe they are a “what the hell” type who isn’t bothered about the money and just wants the title and the glory. Maybe they think that if they do a deal then that will lift the pressure from the situation and will make it more difficult for them to win the tournament.

There are a whole range of reasons why players make deals and a whole range of reasons why they don’t. Many players base their deal making on superstitions and how they feel that their luck is running at that particular time. Most players however base their decisions around such things as how big their chip stack is in relation to their opponents and how good or bad those opponents actually are although as I said before, the difference in skill tends to get negated as the blinds get higher and higher as the supposed superior player has much less time to prove that superiority.

There are many different arrangements when it comes to making deals at a final table but the following example will highlight one potential arrangement that could be used to make readers more aware of the process. Three players are left remaining on the final table and there is 500,000 in chips on the table and these are divided as follows.

PLAYER A:  250,000

PLAYER B:  200,000

PLAYER C:    50,000

The total prize money for the first three places is as follows.

1st Place:    $100,000

2nd Place:  $50,000

3rd place:   $25,000

We can see from this example that Player C has only 10% of the total chips in play so offering him 10% of the $175,000 prize money ($17,500) would be ludicrous as they are guaranteed $25,000 for coming third. All three players are guaranteed at least third place and $25,000 so what happens here is that $25,000 is deducted from the total ($175,000) for each player and the remainder ($100,000) is then divided up between the players that reflects the percentage number of chips that they have.

In this example Player A would receive 50% of the remaining $100,000 because they have 50% of the chips. Player B would receive 40% because they have 40% of the chips in play and Player C would receive the other 10%. This means that the players would receive the following amounts based on this system.

PLAYER A:   $75,000           ($25,000 guaranteed + $50,000 which is 50% of remaining $100,000)

PLAYER B:  $65,000            ($25,000 guaranteed + $40,000 which is 40% of remaining $100,000)

PLAYER C:  $35,000            ($25,000 guaranteed + $10,000 which is 10% of remaining $100,000)

This is an effective system in theory but reality is a whole lot different. Player C may not like the fact that they are only receiving $10,000 more than what they are guaranteed for coming third and try to negotiate a bigger slice. They may add weight to their argument by having a cavalier “what the hell” attitude. If Player C was to win the next hand and double up to 100,000 in chips then the entire dynamics of the situation would change and so would the outlook of the players.

Successful deal making brings together a combination of many things. It involves mathematics, negotiating skills, bravery, bluffing and psychology. Literally thousands of dollars can be won or lost because of skilled or unskilled deal making, whoever said that winning money in poker was all about cards?

This article was written for the official magazine of the televised World Poker Tour and has been reproduced here with their kind permission.