The average TV viewer is watching a more boring game than what would generally be indicated by the player's cards because of marginal utility and the method that payouts are determined in a tournament. When there is a huge chip leader and one or two small stacks, those in between will probably avoid getting involved without a big edge when it can cost them a million or two if they lose while the upside is only a slightly bigger chance at a an amount that exceeds what they need to be set for life. Thus the big stack will succeed with ante steals a lot more often than he would in a cash game and will usually slowly build that stack up in a way that doesn't make poker look all that exciting.

Can this be fixed? One way would be to change the payout structure in some kind of way to reflect the number of chips that a player has when he goes broke. In other words split the total prize money and pay partly due to the place that they finish and partly in proportion to the amount of chips lost on their final hand.

Of course the obvious objection would be that this scheme is too complicated for the average viewer to understand. But it still might be worth it to encourage more action.

Ameliowhat?

if i understand this correctly, you are saying that if a player loses 90% of their stack on one hand, and busts the next, they should get paid a lot less than if they just busted their whole stack on one hand?

i'm not sure how that will make tournament poker more exciting, all it would do is have players constantly counting chip stacks every hand to see who they cover

a better idea imo: when the final table hits, split a bunch of the remaining prize pool based on ICM or chip chop, then play for whatever is left over as winner-take-all

not that i like that much better, i think things are fine as is

I haven't thought through all the details. But the basic idea would be to come up with a scheme to prevent the large stack having such an unnatural chance of stealing the ante. Against the large stack the scenario you proposed would almost never occur.

That also fixes the problem. The question is whether that would make for better TV.

Ones vernacular is unnecessarily verbose.

Focusing on pretty much the singular event of the year that is watched by people new to poker sounds like an incredible waste of time. You'd be better off rewarding people with some sort of voting system for being the most entertaining player, particularly as you are trying to reward players for entertaining the viewer. But then we end up in a world of Will Kassouf's.

I need to know the country of origin and see Ameliorated used in a sentence before I can properly respond.

Not a derail, sir, but I found another error in your writings: The Theory of Poker, Fourth Edition, Eighth Printing, December 2005, page 182.

You reference bluffing when you draw the king of spades, but you are discarding the king of spades.

It's actually a very simple solution. Make 2nd place through 9th place all pay the same.

That would make for some amazing TV poker.

There's no need to fix what's not broken. What commentators should do is keep emphasizing the entitlement of the large stack to this dominance and the effort that it took that player to build that stack before the FT, possibly with flashbacks to the key double-up moments of that leader.

The sight of a short stack finally getting dealt AKo only to lose to the leader's rag-rag is fun. Maybe I'm biased because I was drawn into poker by such dominant maniacs of the late 2000s as Annette Obrestad, Max Lykov, Dario Minieri, Benny Spindler.

There are few more satisfying things in an MTT than dominating an FT, and viewers should be encouraged to play LAG in their own tourneys so that they can reap the benefits at their FTs, bringing everyone else into submission.

Widely adopted LAG play at the early stages of MTTs will then enhance the gaming experience of their recreational participants and make them more willing to return to another tourney to gamble.

The big stack has fought hard and earned their chips, with the intention to steal antes etc late on

Taking away this advantage seems unfair

Say hello to a 5 hour FT bubble and the most boring play ever....

It's not broken.

What if we made the ME a hyper-turbo PSKO?

Adding a shot-clock and players with personality will do a lot more to make Final Tables exciting than what you suggested.

ROFL

1st place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hevad_Khan

("At the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event Khan finished in sixth place... For the 2008 World Series of Poker a new rule was in effect...")

Honorable mention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXITEJc06_A&t=19s

Shot clock: definitely yes.

Hyper: it won't help - short stacks' ranges will remain tight until they're below 10 bb deep, so it's better to have some postflop play on TV.

PKO: not for big-field TV MTTs, please - the FT payouts would be lower than in a traditional MTT as a bigger portion of the prize pool would be split among early finishers. Leave alone that it's hard to calculate progressive bounties in live poker. There are live non-progressive super-KOs, but of course that format is used for small-field MTTs only.

prolly also would make the days leading up to the final tbl more boring if there is an incentive to play nitty with a big stack right before the final table.

Ameliorated? No. Emilio Estevez? Absolutely.

I don't see this as a problem that needs to be fixed.

Hate this idea that is the whole point of tournaments it would greatly reduced the complexity and skill level if there was a change.

I've just had a weird, possibly stupid idea:

Make the current shortest stack at the table pay the antes for everyone

The shortie would have to gamble with a wider range to avoid being anted out too fast.

I think the average viewer is going to find 12+ hours of live play boring anyway, and the obvious objection is that there's no reason to change the rules of poker just because we happened to have two out of three years of competent big-stack play and wire-to-wire winners.

If you want exciting and interesting poker for TV you can do one of the following:

a.) Completely change how poker tournaments work.

b.) Air a high stakes cash game.

Alec Torelli has found some creative ways of dealing with and/or neutralizing larger stacks at the poker table.

Yeah by Alec's rules nobody would know how many chips the other person has