We've all been in that situation where we're deep in a tournament and our wife goes into labor. Now you're forced to make a tough decision between witnessing the birth of your child, and forfeiting your stack (unless you are Deeb, in which case it's a no-brainer).

But what if at any point in the tourney, you can cash out your stack like in a cash game, but for only 90% of the icm equity? The money gets removed from the overall prizepool and paid out immediately. The ICM would be based on the starting prizepool, not the adjusted prizepool.

This would allow the fun of a tourney but with the convenience of a cash game. It would be good for the remaining players' equity when someone cashes out (because now the prizepool is slightly bigger relative to the amount of chips in play), but it's also good for the players who might not want to finish the tourney for whatever reason, as now they don't have to forfeit their stack (or accumulate enough clout to get special treatment despite poor decision-making).

In this format you would also be able to tip the dealer, which gets removed from the prizepool. Nobody would complain about this because if someone is dumb enough to do that, they are probably not good at poker, and thus you want their action. But you'd need to institute an excessive tipping rule (which I have been advocating for years regardless), because otherwise the more generous players would ruin the EV for everyone else.

Personally, I think this format would be great. It would allow the tournament to finish quicker, and would encourage rec players to join into the fun of a tournament that they otherwise wouldn't have time for. And when your wife is about to go into labor, you aren't limited to just cash games. Think about it, would your EV be higher in a cash-tourney or a normal tourney? I think everybody's EV is higher in cash-tourneys, as it's clearly good for recs, but it's also clearly good for pros.

Didn't full tilt try this about 15 years ago?

90 percent is way too high.

somewhere between 70 and 80 seems like the sweet spot to me

I played a live tourney the other day (not something I do very often) and I noticed that the fatigue factor was huge for how players navigated the later levels. People made mistakes that they just were not making in earlier levels. Part of the “skill” of tournaments is the ironman quality of it, and pros are generally better at consistently making good decisions. When one punt can completely tank all the previous decisions you made, it is a much different game.

Yep, but IIRC that was a linear amount comparing the chips to the cost of the starting stack with some multiplier and not an ICM chop. Not a new idea in the slightest

I think it's a great idea and it would be awesome for a poker site to give it a shot.

Let's say you play an $11 tournament and the blinds start at 5c/10c.
So you're essentially sitting at a cash table with increasing blind levels.
2 or 3 hours into the tourney you're playing 50c/1$ blinds.

You can cash out at any point in the tournament, but only once and only up to x% of your stack (not sure about that).
Then, when there is 1 (or 2 or 3) tables left, everyone gets to keep their remaining stack and the tournament is over.

I think this should be fun and I'd certainly try it out.

A tournament without the best part of the tournament, only the early boring grind, sounds awful.

This format has been tested in a timed tourney on a few sites, so stop thinking like your Einstein and you came up with the brightest idea!

People have emergencies all the time and it is what it is because it's ****in life! Just because of this we Now don't need a mtt to cater to such scenarios and kill the fun out of the ****in game just cuz your wife is in labor every other day( I am exaggerating).

75?

Yes, but this is why a lot of recs might not join in the first place. They have joined, got fatigued, punted, and now next time they might be reluctant to join again. Especially if it's a live multi-day event, you would get more entries this way. That is unless the format is not as appealing.


Obviously a similar format has been invented before. I think it should be revisited for live multi-day tournaments (I'm only aware of it being tried online), whereas otherwise it's kind of unnecessarily complicated. A cash-tourney online is pointless because I can just bring my laptop into the delivery room and kill two birds with one stone.

Not a new idea.

I believe you posted this 90% just to try and dig at what Koon and that TD did. There is no evidence Koon received any special treatment. I believe anyone with greater than starting stack, in a reentry tournament, with late and re entries still open, with a good and rational reason for the request, would get same consideration as Koon.

I would play it

Its a bad idea. It's just not convincing at all that letting 'fish on a heater' artificially lock up a win is good for the overall event - its not fair to other players who want a chance at ALL of those chips.

Its fine to negotiate a buy-out/payouts once everyone is in the money but before that, no dice.

lol @ metaphorically describing the birth of your child as "killing a bird".

Im assuming the second bird is his wife? Or is it his newborn?

In all seriousness I think the OP's idea is not bad for a novel tournament format. Everything except for the tipping part. Any tipping needs to come out of your cut when you cash out/bust.

I also agree that 90% of ICM is way too high. Make it like 60-70 % ICM if you cash out early. It should be a - EV move that is there as an option, but you don't want the tournament to encourage people who are in a temporary good situation to just cash in.

At first glance this seems like it would lower the fish ev which is something tournament organizers try to do the opposite. It also lowers variance which also I dont think is good at all for the fish. Mystery bounties and all of this is the exact opposite to this I imagine and it seems all tournament organizers is trying to push it really hard.

This is an interesting idea, but I don’t know how it could be implemented in a live format. Calculating ICM in a large field tournament is -not- easy. And it’s not just a function of your stack size, but changes any time anyone’s stack changes. So you need to know how many chips every player in the tournament has at all times.

Also, don’t almost all tournaments now already take the dealer tip out of the prize pool? I don’t see why you’d need to make some special provision for this.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Lol