Hey, a $4,000 profit is still pretty nice
When a poker tournament ends with 15 players remaining, it is generally safe to assume that the event was some sort of satellite tournament. Perhaps it awarded 15 seats to a bigger tourney, or maybe 14 seats and the 15th-place finisher won a little cash. But in the case of the St. Augustine Championship (StAC) at bestbet St. Augustine (Florida), that assumption would be incorrect.
This past weekend, the $300 buy-in, $30,000-guaranteed tournament attracted 340 entries, generating an $83,300 prize pool. A total of 43 players made the money, but once Paul Mitchell was eliminated in 16th place, the remaining 15 competitors agreed to an even chop. All 15 of them won $4,461.
Scanning past StAC and similar events at the casino, all of which featured chops among much smaller groups of players, it seems that the regular first prize would have been 4-5x what each of the 15 players ended up with (I can’t find a pre-chop prize structure).
But…why?
So why would the players all agree to this? After all, there were still some solid pay jumps to come and of course, one of the two main purposes of playing in a poker tournament is to win (the other is to profit). Chops are normal, but one with this many players is definitely odd.
It could have been as simple as everyone just feeling they had played enough and that $4,461 is a very nice return on a $300 investment. For a local/regional casino tournament, the pay jump from what would have probably been $933 (which is what Paul Mitchell received) is very good. I know I would like it.
Some in the poker community have posited that there could have been tax considerations at play, as well. Casinos have to withhold 24% in federal income tax from poker tournament wins over $5,000, so a $4,461 prize made for a heck of a stopping point. Of course, the players will still probably have to report the income on their tax returns eventually, but in this case, they won’t have to right now.
How about twice as many players?
While a 15-way chop is unusual, this is not the first time such a huge multi-way split has happened. In October 2023, for instance, 29 players agreed to a chop at the MGM Grand’s MGM Eighty GRAND Invitational in Las Vegas.
This one was a little different, in that the tournament was open to cash game players who reached a certain rake threshold during the qualifying period. The poker room also awarded seats to players who hit a specified high hand in cash games.
It was almost an equal split: the top two chip stacks received $3,691, while the other 27 players in the deal got $2,241.
Since the tournament was a freeroll and the participants were cash game players, it is understandable why they would be happy to split the pot like that. It was free money and tournament poker wasn’t their strong suit.
