Deal or No Deal - Sometimes It's an Easy Choice

Sometimes players are not so keen to make a deal in a tournament, especially if they have a big chip advantage or feel they have a big edge over their competition. This was apparently the case with Micro Millions Event 51 where player 'winnietoeter' was ready to play all the way for the $13.5k first place prize.

However, the other three players did not feel the same. In fact, they were so much against it that they agreed to a deal that gave the aforementioned player almost $2,000 more than he would get had he won. You can be against deal-making all you want, but this is one for the 'too good to pass' category.

The details of 'winnietoeter's' deal-making skills were made public on TiltBook, a social network for poker players, where some were delighted by what they were witnessing, while others simply couldn't understand why on Earth anyone would agree to such a deal.

While this may be a somewhat rare occurrence online, this type of deal is not that uncommon in a live setting and I've definitely seen it happen more than once. Sometimes the reasons are of a financial nature, while other times players are just tired and want to go home with their well-deserved money, even if they give up some equity in the process.

In this particular case, the motivation was probably the money, although with pay jumps as they were it doesn't make much sense. Only fourth place was set to take less than what they would get from the deal (around $5k), while with the deal they all received between $6.2 and $6-9k and gave up about $2,000 that was supposed to go to places 2 - 4.

Whatever the logic behind it, 'winnietoeter' earns mad respect for being able to sweet talk (or hustle) three other players into giving him more money than he could ever earn by flat out winning the tournament.

Given the fact that this was just a $2 re-buy event, this is not as shocking as it would be in a bigger buy-in tournament, but it is still a little confusing. Make of it what you will, but this gentleman added $15,300 to his roll instead of $13,500 and that's a pretty decent pay jump in my book.

The player in question did end up finishing in first place so it was an overall great night for him, as he pulled out the victory in a huge field and successfully made a deal that even professional negotiators in high risk situations would envy.

Well played sir, well played!