I’ve been playing lately the little Wednesday night tournament at Artichoke Joe’s. It’s a limit tournament that half hold ‘em and half Omaha/8, and usually gets 3 or 4 tables. Typically, the remaining players chop when it gets to the final table, the final 9, but last night it didn’t happen.
In tournaments such as this, it can be a good idea to chop. The last place or two often won’t return fully on the investment, and the blinds are getting high in relation to the stacks that luck starts to be a significant factor. For example, last night the final table hit when the blinds were $500 and $1000, and the average stack was about $6-7K. I was about average, and two players to my right had huge stacks.
But the player to my immediate left, a short stack with about $2K in chips didn’t want to chop. The even chop would have been about $350 each, although the short stacks would likely have had to give something to the chip leaders to get them to agree. So we kept playing. I went through the blinds but had no playable hands.
One player got knocked out (not the aforementioned short stack), a chop was again discussed, but the same player wanted to keep on. The blinds went up (to $1K and $2K) and we started the hold ‘em round. Then I got lucky.
I raised in MP with pocket 9s, got one caller and a flop of all undercards. The caller called my flop and turn bets (when another undercard hit), but not the river. My next hand, folded to me, I had K-10 offsuit and raised. I got one cold-caller, a very good but loose player and went all-in when a king fell on the flop. He called and showed pocket tens. that luck two hands in a row chipped my up to third place.
A couple of hands later, another player got knocked out, and the chop discussion began anew, and this time everyone agreed. The chip leader (by now close to half the chips in play) held out for $750, and second place wanted $500, leaving the rest of us with just under $400. I was OK with that, and the short stack tossed me an extra $20 to put me just over $400, a nice gesture.
So while I don’t agree with the decision to not chop at 9 players, a little bit of luck kept me in the game and resulted in a better payout. So it’s hard for me to complain. And my bankroll is just a little bit happier today.