It’s not every day you see a 23-way chop in a live poker tournament. 23 ways! However, that’s exactly what happened in a $400 No Limit Hold’em Deepstack event held during the Foxwoods World Poker Finals this week. A whopping 23 players divvied up the prize pool, each taking home at least $10,000. Seriously, there was a 23-way chop in a major live poker tournament. We couldn’t make this up if we wanted to.
John Agelakis ultimately came away with the win in the Deepstack event, earning a commemorative leather jacket, a championship trophy, and $12,011 in cash, just $1,920 (or 19%) more than the 23rd place finisher and $11 more than second place. Meanwhile, Armen Hejinian, Kent Bowley, and Fabrizio Sarra, all from the East Coast, pulled down exactly $12,000 each for finishing second, third, and fourth, respectively. The fifth through 23rd place finishers earned $10,091.
On the poker forum TwoPlusTwo, word of the enormous chop spread like wildfire, with one poster painting the scene of how the deal came to be: “At first they wanted to do $5,000 each and play $100,000 on the final table and 29 agreed and one guy didn’t like it. Then, he got ambushed by seven guys running up to him begging to chop. At the time, they were guaranteed $1,700 each (the guy who said no had 1.1 million chips). Another hour of arguing over chopping and they finally came up with $10,500ish each and the top four chip leaders each got $12,000.” The top 101 players finished in the money.
The same poster added, “Worst thing I have ever witnessed. I can’t believe it happened. It was entertaining to listen to the bickering back and forth.” Another poster tried to rationalize the mega deal: “Chip leader had 30 big blinds and was offered fourth place money. Tourney was turning into a turbo and it’s still a good payday.” Two tables were eight-handed when the deal was struck, while the third table was seven-handed.
The $400 Deepstack event drew a field of 956 and generated a prize pool of $324,000. A total of 73 players survived to see Day 2 and the field was set to see a champion crowned. The winner of the tournament would have taken home over $68,000, meaning that the 23-way deal resulted in the top prize being shaved by over 80%.
The Foxwoods World Poker Finals ends with the annual World Poker Tour (WPT) tournament that begins on October 28th. The televised event retains its $10,000 buy-in this year and will crown a champion on November 2nd, Election Day in the United States. In the interim, tournaments featuring No Limit Hold’em, Omaha High-Low, Seven Card Stud High-Low, Limit Hold’em, and HOSE will play out.
Last year, Cornel Andrew Cimpan took down the WPT World Poker Finals to the tune of $910,000, outlasting Soheil Shamseddin heads-up. The final table also featured Matt “All In At 420” Stout, Eric Froehlich, Curt Kohlberg, and Lee Markholt. The tournament drew 353 players for a $3.4 million prize pool, down about 14% from 2008.
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