Final Table Chopping
There seems to be many questions and concerns regarding “chopping” at the final table; hopefully this brief explanation will help clarify some of those issues. To start with, all players included in the chop must agree to a “chop” and what the respective pay outs will be. Here are a few, but not limited to, “chopping” choices:
1. EVEN CHOP Here is just one example to illustrate an “even chop”.
4 players left and one player has a 110,000 chips, the next 3 players have 95,000, and 90,000 and 85, 000 chips respectively. The pay outs (per the pay out chart) are: $140, $120, $100 and $95. An “even chop” would be something like this: $455 total prize pool and this equals $113.75 per person. 3 players would probably agree to $113 and the extra $3 could go to the player who had the most chips. Another example, 3 players left, prize pool is $240 and the 3 players are close in chips. They each agree to take $80. This would be an “even chop”.
2. REGULAR CHOP
4 players left and prize pool is $420. One player has a massive chip stack and the remaining 3 players are close in chips. They all agree to give the chip leader 1st place money; The remaining 3 players could decide to give 2nd place a little more than 3rd place and 3rd place a little more than 4th place; or they could split the rest evenly between 2nd 3rd and 4th place.
3. CHIP COUNT CHOP
At 9:45 pm, each player counts their chips and whoever has the most chips gets 1st place money, second in chips gets 2nd place money etc.
4. OTHER CHOP
In this example, there are 5 players left who are close in chip counts and the remaining prize pool is $810. Here’s one example of this chop: Each player would agree to receive the 4th place pay out of $100. The remaining $310 is divided up by “chip count percentage”. In other words, if the player with the most chips had 25% of the total chips in play, then that player would receive 25% of the remaining prize pool (25% of $310 would equal $78) which would equal $100 plus $78 for a total payout of $178, and so on until all the money is divided up by “chip percentage”. This is a fair and equitable means to divide the remaining prize pool.