Re: 17 way chop - was it a good decision
 

Being there probably makes a big difference but on principle no matter how the money comes down chopping 17 ways does sound pretty bad.

I think there are lots a variables if you are sittng on the button you could literally folded almost two orbits and have busted 4 or 5 more players without doing anything.

Probably the first time they asked I would have said "let's don't talk chop until we get to the final table"

The weird thing is a chop of the final table probably only nets you an extra $50 and with everyone hassling you it was probably not worth the aggevation.

Re: 17 way chop - was it a good decision
 

"I know I made a bad deal. I just wanted to see what the opinions of others would be. "


My opinion is that with all the pressure from 16 other players on you I think taking the deal is completely understandable even though you lost some EV.
This is especially true if you intend on playing there again and don't want to have a reputation for being extremely unfriendly amongst the regulars.


I played a tournament where we got down to 10 players and it paid top 9. The lady who was about to get blinded-out wanted to do a $100 "save" so that whoever finished in 10th got $100.
I think 9th and 8th were already $125 and $150 or something.
1st was $4.1k and the save money for 10th place would come directly out of 1st and nobody else.

I held out for a few moments but decided to go with it when everybody else said "fine."
I gathered it was customary to do such a save.
Besides, I was in 8th place at the time and my chances of finishing in 1st were pretty slim so it didn't really effect me.
If I was the chip-leader then I would have said "no way" but with all that peer-pressure and being new to the room I might have had a slightly uncomfortable time doing even that.


So, I busted out in 8th and left the tourney.
I later learned that the tourney got chopped evenly when they got to 4-handed even though the chip-leader had about 65-70% of the chips.
So with the remaining prizes being something like 4k, 2.5k, 1.5k, 1k they all walked with 'about' 2nd place money of 2.25k each. The 3 short-stacks with about 10% chips each got the same pay-out as the chip-leader with almost 70%.

Some people are just freaking stupid. And sometimes you get involved in deal-making with them in a poker-tournament.