Poker: Final Table Deals

At some time during your poker playing life you’ll find yourself in a situation where someone will want to make a deal at a final table. First off, you should realize that under no circumstances should you make a deal if you don’t want to. Never let the coaxing of the other players force you into a deal if you’d rather play it out. The easiest way to deal with deal making is to never make one.

If you are interested in dealing off the remainder of the prize pool you need to make sure you’re getting your fair share. You should be getting an equal percentage of the remaining prize pool as the percentage of the total of chips in the tournament that you have in front of you. If you have 20% of the total chips you get 20% of the total prize pool. This is the fairest way because everyone gets what they’ve earned.

Not so fair is to chop the remaining prize in equal amounts for the remaining players. This would only make sense when all the players remaining have close to equal stacks. It’s not a common deal until the number of players gets below four. Don’t get talked into this deal if you have more than 20% of any opponent’s stack, but it’s fine if you have less than anyone else.

Whether you make a deal or not should be decided based on how you compare to the skill level of your opponents. If you’re sitting with a bunch of pros you might want to take a deal. If you’re playing your friend’s girlfriend head-to-head in a home game you might want to play it out.