Scenario:

Friendly home game type tourney. Mixture of super fishy types and a handful of people that actually know what they're doing. $40 entry with unlimited rebuys first 2 hours. Structure designed to last 5-6 hours. Normal to pitch in $5-10 to bubble boy. 18 players with some rebuys.

Payouts with re-entries are 1st $400, 2nd $300, 3rd $200, 4th $100, $30 to high hand. We all agree with 7 left, top 4 pay $10 to bubble boy.

We get down to 6 players and someone mentions a 6 way chop (again, we are paying 4 places). Most everyone is up for it. That's pretty much $165 each. I will chop 99% of the time, but I have never heard mention of a chop before even being in the money in my life (15+ years of tournament play). I said, no way I chop before the bubble, it was a weird situation and I had that guilty feeling, sorta.

I should add, the mention of chop came up right after I won a large pot and probably had 35%+ of total chips. a couple players were down to 2-3 blinds.

Then @ 3 players they mentioned chop again. One solid player said "nope, he refused, it was a one time deal". We play and I call this guys shove, him: 8Ts, me AJo, straight runs out on board. Next hand, he says wanna chop, I agree, we 3 way chop $300 each.

In hindsight, a 6 way chop would have been $165 for a $40 entry tourney. I have no doubt I would have finished in the top 3 (but anything could have happened) 2 players were extremely short stacked. And obviously whether I walked away with 0, 100, 165 or 400, it wasn't life changing. It just seemed weird to chop when we weren't even in the money yet.

Was I wrong? Opinions?

Your wrong to think there is something wrong with it. Your not wrong to elect not to chop at any time.

Btw you should not feel a chop as to even. If they propose an even chop you can always counter offer and ask for more money.

A chop is simply an agreement among the remaining players .... any agreement you reach is fair because the players agree to it .....

In a tournament like this the amount of BBs left to play at the end is usually very small for almost everyone, even the chip leader. So virtually anything can , and does happen. This is why chops of all sorts are considered and often accepted. It is not wrong to decide against a chop if you want. It is not wrong for folks to agree on some other kind of chop after others wanting to are eliminated. You do what you think is best for you, and be ready to catch some verbal abuse from disgruntled players from time to time.