As someone who plays a lot of live Vegas daily tournaments, I see the 'pay the bubble' thing come up all the time. Up until now I've generally been in favor of one, occasionally two, bubbles paid. Playing between 4-10 hours is a long time to put in to walk away with -1 buyin (or more) on a flip or whatnot. The daily structures are a bit turbo-y and bubble pay and chops seem like a fact of life.

Today, however, there was a situation where the final table was 10 players paying out 6 places. Someone floated the idea of paying 4 bubbles. The whole table thought it was brilliant (except me), and although I was a bit taken aback by the idea, I was too tired to put up much of a fight and decided not to be the only one to disagree. It was not that big of a deal in a $75 fast tourney with FT avg stack around 6-8bb (limit O8), except the 4-way bubble took ~12% out of a ~$2600 prize pool. In real money terms it was not significant, but the dailies bubbles I'm used to paying out are usually more like 1-2% of prize pool, like $125 from 6k-12k for example.

I ended up coming in 7th and got my buyin back, but with $1k up top I wasn't very satisfied, especially having started the final table with a top 3 stack, finding edges against this field all day, and with a goal of adding to my modest WSOP roll. I analyzed the FT play and my own play afterwards, and here are my takeaways: the 4-bubble phenomenon loosened up the table, took away big stacks' main advantage (pressuring medium and threatening short stacks) while flattening money places and devaluing the actual min cash. So I think it had the effect of turning what was already a turbo structure into even more of a flippy cluster***k. My play was altered uncomfortably as well, as I found myself playing too tight (waiting for shorties to bust) OR too loose/laggy within a stretch of about 8 hands, folding winners pre and getting sticky with losers. I'm not blaming the bubble deal for my poor play, per se, but my timing was off, and later I couldn't help but wonder if the 'deal' had me struggling to adjust to the new math of the table (IOW, shorties DGAF).

As I was driving home I thought to myself, ok that's it, no more paying bubbles, no chops, just play it out every time. Perhaps it alters play too much, perhaps my own play. Then later I thought maybe that's an overreaction, go ahead and pay one bubble but no chop. That's where I currently stand.

At some point I might do a math-based analysis of this phenomenon (i.e. how many times do I lose $75 v. get 1st place for $1k given the shortstack dynamics and my perceived edge or lack thereof in that environment), but for the time being I'd like to hear some stories from other players. What do other you think of my current position? Can you share a FT experiences where you think either a weird bubble deal or chop radically changed the table play, constituted an angle for one or more players, or threw you off your game?

so its a $75 tourney, no chance anyone in the tournament is a real pro yourself included so you can chop 10 handed or pay out bubbles and all types of other silly things, but from a pro aspect you should never do any of that, ever.

you really are overthinking the result, even at a 50% roi it doesnt make sense to play less then $300 daily live tournaments so all of those venetian and wynn aria etc dailys are just for entertainment. you correctly understand that paying out a bunch of bubble spots or doing any type of chops relieves the pressure and changes the dynamics for the worse. so even as someone playing for recreation but wants the satisfaction of winning say a $175 daily for those same reason you should never partake in all the silly stuff lolliveregs come up with and use the pressure to your advantage.

Thanks for the advice. I'm not a 'real pro' yet but I'm getting there, this is probably one of the leaks to plug re the FT stuff.

To the first part of your statement, however, keep in mind plenty of players/pros are using the Orleans mixed game tournaments to brush up for the Series - O8, OE, HORSE.

My advice, don't say "pay bubble" (or no-pay bubble) by default. Evaluate every situation. Basically, if you have edge and got the chips, paying bubble is EV-. If you're below avg. stack and the remaining players are tough, is ok to flat the prizes.

Good replies guys. I live in vegas and play alot of these daily low-limit tourneys. I've been thinking about this as well. After reading your post, I would have to say that you are not overreacting. Once everyone says "pay the bubble", play loosens quite a bit (depending on number of payouts) and your reads tend to go out the window. Getting your buy-in back feels good for about 10 minutes, but later when you get home - you are completely unsatisfied and would have rather continued with the original pay-outs. Paying bubble is definitely EV- considering you are not playing to get your buy-in back, but rather the 1k up top. It really benefits the short-stack player and begins to throw the dynamic of the table off. I have begun to not like paying the bubble. And why cut into your payout when you are top 3 stacks at the final table? Doesnt make sense. Just my thoughts.

This brings up an interesting point. Bubble $ is generally either taken off 1st, combo 1st/2nd, or (or most commonly ime) evenly off each place. And clearly this is bad. It's easy, and fast, but not necessarily proportionate to edge/stack ratios. My most recent thought at a FT recently was bubble $ should come off of last 3 places or something like that, leaving top 3-5 spots intact. That way there's still incentive to play for first (including shorties), and the flattening only happens at the bottom.

Thx for reply, good advice.

As I was looking for advice in the OP, I'll share my latest FT experience, which was last Sunday night HORSE at Orleans. I may have already benefited from the thread, not so much from the bubble thing but from the chop/not-chop mindset.

[If anyone else would like to post their specific experiences w/a positive or negative bubble or chop, that was part of the original intent of the thread, a group solve/gripe]

Was a decent turnout, ~90 players this close to WSOP. Ran good/played good or whatever, was in final 10, FT was 9, and we were two tables of 5 hand for hand. Someone floated the pay the bubble idea, everyone was good w/it, shortie busted and thanked everyone for the bubble $. From a social standpoint it was good politics, it was about 6 hours into the tournament and this time the dynamic didn't change at all, I think mostly due to the 5-handed play. I was in the middle of the pack in chips, and maybe 2nd at my table.

As we consolidated into FT I decided I'd refuse a chop if offered, just to go for it. TBH I thought I could hit 4th or better, didn't think I'd necessarily win with a mega bigstack at the table but was open to it lol.

Chop was not discussed in early FT stages, so no decision was needed beyond playing my best. Once we were 6-handed bigstack was even biggerstack so no one even brought the chop up at that point. Two bustouts later, shorty did bring up a chop, but 2nd place refused. 2nd place busted next, shorty said something smarmy about how he should have taken the chop (to me, not him), but I told smarmy I would have also refused if 2nd hadn't before the idea got around the table.

End result: 7 pm start time was creeping up on 4 am, stacks were pretty close, blinds were high, everyone was falling asleep and we could have thrown chips at each other for quite a while. 3-way even chop was $1408, chipleader asked for $1500 and me and smarmy threw chipleader $46 each and walked with $1362. Prize places were ~2100/1250/890, it was pretty close to an ICM chop and in a situation where the avg stack is <10bb I'm generally happy to get better than 2nd place $. I ~14x'd the buyin which is pretty good for a daily.

More importantly, I maintained focus thoughout the FT, a marked improvement over the other tournament, and having already made my mind up about not chopping definitely helped me maintain aggression and poise.

When I played the Aria nightly a couple of years ago I was the big stack on the FT and quite a few of the other players just folded their way to the bubble so they could ask for a bubble deal. I'm not normally adverse to a bubble deal but there's no way I'm going to take $140+ out of first place for someone that has folded down to 2bb purely because they're trying to get their money back. Probably no surprise the regs all took my decision badly and told me how they always chop at the Aria but it's that type of pressure that almost forces people into giving up 1bi equity just because they believe it's standard pratice