A Proposal For A New Way To Distribute Tournament Prizes

[David Sklansky]

Nowadays the big buy in tournaments with several hundred players tend to pay the top ten per cent or so of the players about double their buy in. And that doesn't increase substantially until the final table. That really forces players to deviate from normal poker strategy if they are trying to maximize their EV. One solution would be to start payoffs at a level way below the buy in and gradually increase it. But I think I have a better idea.

Split the prize money into two (or more) bowls. The last table is paid from one bowl (comprised of perhaps half the total) using typical percentages, maybe 35, 25, 15, 10, etc.
The other bowl would be distributed when ten(?) percent of the players are remaining, and it would be done in exact proportion to the chips each player had in front of them. This would be trivially easy in tournaments where your chips are equivalent to the buy and simple otherwise. (It would probably be a good idea in multi day events to end the day at this point, if possible.)

In very large tournaments there could be two spots when prizes are distributed proportionally to the chips. Say when there are 200 players left and again when there are 50.

The point is that at the present time the prize structure is silly. At the Bellagio main event, there was more to be gained from moving from 101 to 100 than from eleventh to tenth. That means that when there were 105 or fewer players and you were in say 87th place, you would be a fool to gamble with small but clear edges. Merely folding means you are over 90% to pick up 45K while gambling might add a one half of one percent chance to finish first. With my scheme however the gamble could be worth it since when you hit 100, you will win that much more if the gamble worked.

Of course those of you who have become much more adept at the nuances of pure tournament strategy than real poker strategy might not like this idea.