I mean the greek dude was a obvious spot

Yeah, agreed. I imagine if Georgios busted 3rd then Chewy and Danny would have had a chat.

I understand that. But he was responding to someone who said it makes for terrible viewing which it does.
That doesnt mean he's saying they should punt to put on a show.

It's strange he was getting **** for this commentary when it was right.
6 good well studied players make for an awful final table from an entertainment standpoint. That's it.

You hit 2 things on the head- it was edited and there were characters. people also weren't really aware of ICM back then so they were willing to play bigger pots and go all in more. Bad players also had a much better chance of going deep back then.

lol

it wasn't that people were unaware of ICM (good players were, though ofc it was less perfected), main factor was the fact that payouts were MUCH more top-heavy back then, which meant that correct ICM decision was typically to play for the win. In fact, it was weaker players who would typically pay much more attention to pay jumps.

I dont follow live tournaments too closely, but online the differences are massives, big field tournaments went from paying 30-40% of prizepool to the winner to around 10%

I should have phrased that better. ICM was a thing but not nearly as well understood as today and way less people used it.

Your point about events being even more top heavy back then is good as well.

That old email string with Lederer was really interesting. I never realized they rolled the blinds back for the final table. That's insane.

I do remember the 50k horse championship would go NL Hold em only for the the TV final table which is lol

when did big field online tournaments pay out 30-40% of the field?

i'm quite sure that was never the case, at least not in the last 20 years.
iirc pokerstars used to pay exactly 10% of the MTT fields and then expanded it to around 14-15% back in maybe 2008 / 2009 or so, i'd say? And they got quite a bit of backlash for it because it was LESS top heavy than before.

But maybe i have things mixed up in my head, it's certainly possible.

I don’t ever recall a major tournament paying 30-40% of the field. Maybe 20%, I think there would be a major stink about 30 or 40.

He’s saying it was paying 30% to the winner not 30% of the field.

Oops, your right. I believe the thinking back then was advertising big 1st place winners would help draw eyes on the game. As time went on around 08 or so the thought was to try and flatten out the payouts, pay a few more spots and give a little more money to those min cashing or middling. The thinking was those people would most likely take that money and dump it back into another tournament.

Some of those pre 2003 payouts were laughable. You didn’t even get your money back at times if you min cashed a main event.

I remember playing a 10k free roll way back in the mid-'00s on Doyle's room with 100's (or more) of players that only paid 27 players, and first place was $2,700!

I remember it so well as another player and I, who chatted often on AIM, agreed to split any results either of us managed to win. I busted not far from the money and then I shadowed him until he won it. He then moved up from NL10/NL25 to NL200 and ghosted me on my 1.35k split. :/

There are some hilarious payouts from the old days.
The main event had a million dollar first prize for years no matter the number of entities which led to an absurd pay jump from second to first.


But many other events had similar types of jumps.

It was also pretty standard to only pay about 10 percent of the field back then.

For example- 1992 main event

1st-1 million
2nd-354k
3rd-177k

yeah sick whale

Hes probably unironically better than LuckyChewie lol

Yeah i figured someone was gonna make a comment and then post his graph.

Not saying he was a huge whale but he was a big enough spot for chewey to decline the deal. Or maybe Chewey just doesnt care who knows, he did play HU vs Isaac Haxton in the 300k shrb and no deal was made (allegedly)

we have no idea what these guys are worth or how much of themselves they have. Variance is definitely something to be taken into account with these pay jumps for most people.

I mean if Chewy found 1.5 million in the street (or whatever the number was) I doubt he'd play this dude HU 40 blind poker for it even if he thinks he has an edge.

Maybe Chewey does not even know who the guy is. He is probably not using internet very much as there is always a risk he would see pictures of himself from 2015.

Good one, that's funny. I don't follow to much tournament poker. But the name Lucky Chewy in my head is synonomous with being unpleasent to watch or look at, without looking at an old picture I don't remember exactly why. But when I saw him in this past event, I was thinking he didn't look bad like I remembered.

I must be an oddball, but I enjoyed the streaming all the way from day 2 on, and really enjoyed the final table made up of a very strong group of players considering there were nearly 4,000 entries. And while I would have preferred Nick Schulman in the booth for the finale, I thought Jesse Silvia's commentary and style improved over the course of the tournament and provided some good final table insights.

Despite Nick on the call, I watched only a very tiny bit of the milly buy-in, and skipped the final table - there just wasn't the same excitement over a two table SNG, and the entrants and their interpersonal dynamics were all overly familiar from all the Triton and PokerGo high roller series.

I played heavily from 2009-2016 and don't recall any tournament ever paying 30-40% prizepool to first. I remember winning a 200k guarantee that just hit guarantee and it paid 15% to first. There's no way mathematically you can pay 15-20% of the field and then have 30-40% to first unless everyone else gets next to nothing