Making a Deal

Making a deal at a final table, for those poker players who are good enough to get there, can be a critical moment in their poker careers. For example, during one of the WCOOP series (World Championship of Online Poker) at the end of the main event final table, players were making deals with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.

One player, a top online poker player, increased his payout over $100,000 because of his exceptional deal making skills. While most players will never have the opportunity to make deals for this much money, knowing the proper way to negotiate, combined with the knowledge of figuring out the proper figures, can mean the difference of a few thousand dollars.

Deal making is becoming a huge part of online poker. Poker Stars used to be the only site that allowed deals at the final table, but now Full Tilt has included the option as well. Poker players, therefore, need to know how to make a deal, not only to prevent themselves from being ripped off, but so they can try to squeeze out some extra money.

The Deal

The best way to learn how to figure out the numbers is to determine how many players are going to be involved in the deal, the chip counts of each player and what each place pays. Let us look at an example:

First place pays $10,000, second place pays $5000 and third place pays $2000. The final three players are trying to make a deal. The first step is to combine all 3 spots. This means that $17,000 is going to be split up, the top 3 spots added together.

The next step is to subtract third place money 3 times, since all three players are at least going to earn $2000 (the amount of third place’s prize). This brings the total to $11,000 to be split up.

Then players have to look at the chip stacks. If first place has an extremely dominant lead over his opponents, he can rightfully ask for nearly $8000 of the last $11,000. This is because the other 2 short stacks are both going to be happy with anything better than third place money. Since they already have this, they may consider anything extra an added bonus.

Having a huge chip lead can mean a lot of money. If the stacks are more even, players should try to highlight some reasons why they deserve extra. For example, a player may want to show his opponents his Heads Up statistics if they are good. Many top online poker players will give up some equity when making a deal because they are not good at heads up play. Heads up can sometimes come down to luck, so if play enters 3-handed or heads up, try and use good statistics and the opponents fear of heads up play to negotiate some extra money.