Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil9
this won't stop the whiny nits complaining about being 7-handed in a 9-handed tournament at the 50/100 level. I mean, those 300 bb blind stacks must be suffering!
I think you're misunderstanding why people complain.
In a cash game, people write off their blinds like they were dead blinds, so the shorter they are the more blinds they see. And your counter of being super deep stacked addresses that concern. It's not a good counter - the equity in the blinds goes somewhere, so in an unraked game it's just a question of whether you're better suited to play 3-handed or 10-handed.
The more legitimate complaint in a cash game is that you get more hands/hr, which exaggerates your loss if you're a loser and your win if you're a winner. Also the house takes rake on more hands per hour, but that's irrelevant and often the per hand rakes drop shorthanded faster than hands per hour increases (so the casino takes less on a per hour basis).
In a tournament, people will complain about playing short for a different, and more legitimate, reason. And that's because the more hands that are played, the more likely someone variances out of the tournament. One table playing super slow will affect the monetary EV of the other tables. (If you can't imagine it, imagine the extreme case of a 2-table tournament where every player is equally skilled, the bubble is exactly half the players, and one table refuses to play a single hand.)
I don't complain (and secretly love) playing short-handed cash games, but I'd definitely agree with balancing tournament tables within reason. 9/9/7 seems kind of close, but I'd certainly ask to balance 9/9/6 or even 8/8/6.