Quote:
Originally Posted by everydaygrind
Even knowing the fact that the last 7 years, the mincash has been 2x the payout with 10% paying out and the winner getting ~13% of the prize-pool?
No disrespect to Lee or RedOak, but anyone suggesting a lesser % payment for first is out of their mind.
Especially suggesting a number that's less than 10%. That's just absurd and insulting.
everydaygrind, I respect the passion you have for your position that 1st should be higher, but I am curious why you feel so strongly about it? Are you a top flight pro who feels will be hurt with a flatter payout? Do you stake a large number of players?
I feel equally passionate that 1st should be significantly lower than current levels for a wide host of reasons. Below I show what my ideal payout would be based on last year's 6683 entries, and paying 1000 places. I show what the WSOP would likely have paid if they did not have the 10 mil for 1st last year.
I also show what the payouts would be if the WSOP followed the prorated payouts adjusted for field size for the Indy 500, Wimbledon Tennis, the US Open Golf and if winner was paid based on skill alone and not luck.
In the case of the Indy 500, they have 33 entries and 1st pays 17.5% of the prize pool. Using a log formula this is prorated out to only 1.24% being paid to 1st if there were 6683 entries in the race.
For Wimbledon, the prorated log formula results in only 4.6% being paid to 1st if there were 6683 players, and it would be 5.04% if using the US Open golf payouts. These are all well under the 13.85% of the 8.69 million the WSOP would have paid. My ideal payout of 5.3 mil or 8.49% of the pool is still much larger than the other major sporting events.
This brings us to the payout based on skill. How much of winning a tournament is based on skill vs luck? Shouldn't skill be rewarded and luck punished? With a top heavy payout, luck is rewarded. Ask anyone who makes a final table and they will tell you of the many times they got lucky to survive. So why not pay based on skill instead of luck?
To do this I found a way to determine the percentage of luck vs skill in a tournament. Assume you were dealt AA. You would love to be able to shove preflop with that and get a call. Against any lesser likely calling hand you would be about an 80% to 20% favorite. With a field size of 6683 players this means you would have to double up 12.706 times. (2^12.706=6683).
So the chance of you winning by shoving with AA every time is 0.80^12.706=.0587. Thus winning a 6683 player event would be 5.87% skill and 94.13% luck. ( you would win once every 17 years). Thus why not pay 1st 5.87% of the pool or 3.687 million? Even this number is more than the US Open golf and Wimbledon. So it could easily be argued my 5.3 mil "idea" is still too high as well!
The long history of top heavy payouts in tournament poker has conditioned most people to think that is the normal way it should be. But the reality is that even cutting 1st by 50% is STILL above normal as shown by payouts in every other large field major sporting events.
Here is the percentage paid to 1st based on skill for different field sizes:
Below I show my ideal payout based on 6683 player field. (Note only 9 spots pay less and 991 pay more or the same vs WSOP "normal") I would actually pay 15% of the field so I would pay 1002 spots instead of 1000. (not shown below though for simplicity) Also, I added a couple of levels at the bottom so that once the top 10% get hit near 693rd place, it will begin to pay 2x the buyin. Not shown is the tax saving my flatter payout would save... over $2,000,000 or $2,000 per cashing player due to lower marginal rates. The over 3 million drop I propose for 1st is really only a 2 million drop after taxes. And instead of being taxed at 39.6% for the winner, it is only taxed at 10% by giving it to the min cashers. That alone saves almost $900,000 in taxes that can then be recycled into the poker economy.
I will follow up later with my ideal payout based on paying $1 million or more to everyone at the final table. (which I think is fine for the main event only)
RedOak
RedOak