Monday, September 21, 2009

Rewarding bad poker play

Something ocurred to me last night at the end of my bar poker game that has had me thinking. It happens may times in bar poker, but I have seen it at cash tournaments. A weaker player ( yes, I am being nice! LOL) has a big card rush and it carries over all the way to heads up. Do you chop the prize with them. I know that in theory it makes sense to chop most of the time, but do you reward bad play and does that lead to more bad play. Last night a very strong player ended up heads up with a weaker player that had cards of a life time. Strong player was chip leader about 60 % I would guess, so not a huge amount. First prize is a $60 casino buy-in and second is a $10 bar certificate. Strong player has already won 2 buy-in. At heads up he asks weaker player if he wants the buy-in and he is interested. Strong player offers for $10 he will take the bar certificate and it's done. I asked him why he had done the chop later and he said that in his experience in bar poker chopping makes sense and he already had his buy-in. I can't fault him for his reasoning, but it still brings the question. Should you reward a player for bad poker play? If you have an opinion please post a comment on here, twitter or facebook.

Had a great weekend at the lake. Beautiful weather and good fishing. Forgot my camera at the lake, so no photos until later this week.

Tonight begin Heartland Poker Tour week at Milacs. Hope I have something good to write about later.

1 comment:

  1. Valid points Dave. In my opinion there is no way that the weaker player is going to feel any different even if they lose. My point, if they already made it to second place they are already convinced they played a "good game". Some players, including the one in question, seems to have huge chip stacks all the time. More often than not its gone long before heads up, but sometimes it isn't. So many of the poorer players have been playing for years, if their games have not changed by now, my thought is it probably won't. My game has changed very little, but the difference is, I know it, I know where my weakness is, and I keep telling myself I need to grow. I WANT to be a better player, many players have no intention of growing their game and simply care less. Even more intereting, I often take the chop simply for the tournament director, it's late, they usually are out of the game, and I feel for them if it goes on to long. :) It's that girl in me, the caregiver.... Great topic, can't wait to hear your stories from this week!

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