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Tourney Tournament that allows you to cash out before the end? (2 Viewers)

Gobbs said:
This could possibly be the worst tournament idea ever. If somebody can win the tournament and make less than their entry fee, it’s just a monumentally bad idea. Where is the value?

When I enter a $100 tournament, the TD should be able to say, if there are 20 players, the payout will be $1,000 for first place, $600 for second, $400 for third (or whatever). That way, I know my risk and reward and can make an informed decision as to if I want to play. With this rule, my reward is completely unknown. It would be foolish to play without knowing the (approximate) reward!!!
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So you are hung up of the term "tournament". If you play in a cash game, you have no idea how much you can win either.

I wouldn't say no to this game if it was the only game in town, and I would absolutely attend it if it were hosted on a night before I had to go on shift (usually I just have to give those games a hard "No").

Now, I wouldn't offer to host a game like this, but I would appreciate being able to play some cards on a night that I wouldn't be able to otherwise.
 
Gobbs said:
This could possibly be the worst tournament idea ever. If somebody can win the tournament and make less than their entry fee, it’s just a monumentally bad idea. Where is the value?

When I enter a $100 tournament, the TD should be able to say, if there are 20 players, the payout will be $1,000 for first place, $600 for second, $400 for third (or whatever). That way, I know my risk and reward and can make an informed decision as to if I want to play. With this rule, my reward is completely unknown. It would be foolish to play without knowing the (approximate) reward!!!
Click to expand...

Sometimes tournament players crack me up.

Your reward is anywhere between $0 and $2,000. You're not playing for the top n places anymore; you're playing for the chips because they're cash value. The features of the game that control payouts are structured like cash poker, so you have to approach the risk and reward like you would for a cash game: How much money is in play? How much of it is being held by players that I outmatch? How much is held by players who outmatch me? How much time do I have to try to win it? When should take my winnings or cut my losses?

It's not as easy to compare as payouts for a traditional tournament, but the information is there (and is made up of many of the same things you should consider in a tourney).
 
I would be more interested in the concept only if an early cash-out were for somewhat less than the stack’s intrinsic worth, but somewhat more than your buy-in.

Getting the stack’s full value doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, much as straight equity chops don’t make sense at a final table, and should go through ICM calculations at minimum.

There has to be some downside to ducking out once you get a big stack. Otherwise, it is pretty much always going to be the correct move, I suspect, and it penalizes those still playing.

So for example, if you bought in for $100, and you knock someone else out on the very first hand blind vs. blind, you now presumably have a stack “worth” $200. Cashing out immediately protects you against all the things which can happen after, and nets you a free buy-in for the next event, while giving up the possibility of winning much bigger this time.

But having twice the chips of all the other players early on hardly translates to twice the number of wins, especially in an MTT.

If you can cash out for full value, my guess (without getting into a math analysis beyond my ken) is that the correct move always would be to cash out as soon as you increased your stack by as much as +50%. My feeling is that the variance in tournaments is such that the bird in the hand is pretty much always going to be the better bet.

However... If that “$200” stack were discounted (say) 30% at cash-out, and only nets the early-departed player $140, that leaves some value behind for the tournament—while forcing the person cashing out to consider the worth of that forfeited $60.

Not sure where the sweet spot is, but I would be intrigued to try such an arrangement. (Cash-outs could be a complicated mess for the tourney director, though.)
 
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Taghkanic said:
Might also want to bring an ICM calculator into play, but again charging a “fee” to early cash-outs.
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This was my thinking, you can absolutely assign a cash value to every stack that doesn't exceed the prize pool using ICM, Which solves a lot of the objections here about people cashing out more than first place.

So I was mainly curious if the game @Darson described was using a similar calculation or if it was one potentially frought with issues.
 
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Sadly my buddy is in Yokohama at the moment so I can't find out any more details. Next week I'll get some answers!
 
I’ve seen a structure where the short stack at the final table had the option to cash out, but never made it out to play in one.
 
Jimulacrum said:
Sometimes tournament players crack me up.

Your reward is anywhere between $0 and $2,000. You're not playing for the top n places anymore; you're playing for the chips because they're cash value. The features of the game that control payouts are structured like cash poker, so you have to approach the risk and reward like you would for a cash game: How much money is in play? How much of it is being held by players that I outmatch? How much is held by players who outmatch me? How much time do I have to try to win it? When should take my winnings or cut my losses?

It's not as easy to compare as payouts for a traditional tournament, but the information is there (and is made up of many of the same things you should consider in a tourney).
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First, my reward is not anywhere between $0 and $2,000. It’s anywhere between $0 and $1,975. That quarter may seem insignificant, but it is the very reason this doesn’t work.

If I win the tournament, and nobody cashes out early, I still don’t get $2,000. If I win, I get $1,000. Of course, from what I can tell, I can accumulate $1,975 in chips and cash out, thus making the effective payouts $25 for first, $1,975 for second, and $0 for third. So, in no way can you call this a tournament. It’s simply not.

However, you can’t call it a cash game, either. Cash games typically don’t have escalating blinds (although they could). Cash games allow players to buy in multiple times throughout the night. Cash games don’t have tournament payouts. So, while it more closely resembles a cash game, it takes aspects from tournament that are undesirable in cash games.

So, basically, what you are left with is a hybrid game that I don’t see as desirable. If you want to have a tournament, have a tournament. If you have players who can’t play that long, play a cash game. Why bastardize the tournament with undesirable features?
 
Another thing that occurred to me is that tournaments get progressively harder. In general in the tournaments I've played the field gets tougher as it narrows, and on top of that blinds go up and if you're behind you'll have to start taking bigger risks.

So, there's something that sits poorly with me with this suggested model since it allows some to cash out before the difficulty level goes up, and in a sense while they 'earned' their chips since they made them somehow they didn't withstand the same difficulty as those playing to the end.

Of course some examples here are fairly extreme, but I do think it bears considering just what message it sends when you can cash out early and make more than the players that may play far longer and either not get in the money at all or end up just barely making it. Something just feels odd about finishing for example fourth out of ten players and getting nothing, whereas a player who played two hours less makes a profit after having cashed out early.

Maybe it's semantics, but if that's the case I really think it should get a different name.
 
I think we are getting closer to the biggest errors in this concept. ICM and the ability to cash out for more than 1st place.

When I ran my survivor tournament (mentioned by @markleteenie in post #4) there was no maximum value for 1st. Therefore, ICM was your chipstack, and you could theoretically take 100% of the prize pool.

In order for the OP's buddy's game to run fairly...
  • The game must have a definitive end. Time or players remaining both work, but it must be posted in advance.
  • Players leaving early must have a pre-set ending time. It doesn't matter if they are up, down, or flat broke, at the stated time (preferably at a break) the game is over for that player.
  • All players get their cash value at the end. This could mean 1st gets 80% of the prize pool, it could mean that 1st left an hour earlier, and the big stack at the actual end of the night 20%
If players can leave willy-nilly, the game would break down just like every single cash game would, if players always left when they were money up. However, this is obviously not the case, since the buddy in question has a game. Nobody - and I direct this at all those that think players are angling the system by leaving early - would play in a game where players hit-and-ran as a custom.
 
Darson said:
I've never heard of this before and I asked why they do this and the response was that there are some players who can't stay all night but do want to play a few hours so the cash-out mechanism allows them to participate without forcing them to stay to the end.
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Interesting. Sounds like maybe this was a creative solution for this group -- like a symbiotic relationship -- without the few extra players, they wouldn't have a game or just a 5-handed game, but with those players, they now have an 8-handed tournament game, but with the rule that allows some of them to leave early.

All poker groups and games can be different, and what works for one group might not work for another. Maybe these few players bring always bring beer and pizza. Maybe these players bust out a lot anyway and rarely cash out.

Downside? The people who leave early might have an 85% cash-out rate in the tournaments. ;) With this format, I would probably commit a portion of the early-leaving players buy-ins to the overall prize pool, like 1/4 or 1/3 of the total prize pool is locked for the regular payouts for the final X players, so only 3/4 or 2/3 of the total prize pool is available for the early departers.

Darson said:
I can imagine that if your game is say 4-6 hours but someone can only play 2 hours and they state that at the start, allowing them to cash out at the appointed time is fair. Allowing them to cash out whenever they feel like it probably won't work.
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FDLmold said:
If they put a time on it and announce it before the cards are in the air, sounds good to me.
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^^ Agree with this.
 
AWenger said:
With this format, I would probably commit a portion of the early-leaving players buy-ins to the overall prize pool, like 1/4 or 1/3 of the total prize pool is locked for the regular payouts for the final X players, so only 3/4 or 2/3 of the total prize pool is available for the early departers.
Click to expand...

This is essentially the same concept I was advocating above... The cash taken out early has to be discounted to some extent, I’d think, or there would be little incentive to stay and “win” the tournament or even place high up.

There has to be some penalty (I was proposing 30% off the pure equity value, above it is suggested at 1/4-1/3 deducted) for cashing out early.
 
I guess a part of the question is "how early is early"?

Let's say that the player(s) leaving are heading out after 3 hours of a 5 hour tournament. When has one player ever dominated a tournament so much that he holds 85% of the chips in play? I dare say that if one player had that dominating of a lead, he'd run ramshod over the table the next 2 hours anyway, and the remaining players, sharing the remaining 15% (that's maybe 2.5% each), would not be playing poker anyway, they'd be waiting for premium hands... and still losing as the big-stack calls them down with a 34x larger stack.

Arguing that the player leaving early would break the tournament is tilting at windmills.
 
Gobbs said:
First, my reward is not anywhere between $0 and $2,000. It’s anywhere between $0 and $1,975. That quarter may seem insignificant, but it is the very reason this doesn’t work.

If I win the tournament, and nobody cashes out early, I still don’t get $2,000. If I win, I get $1,000. Of course, from what I can tell, I can accumulate $1,975 in chips and cash out, thus making the effective payouts $25 for first, $1,975 for second, and $0 for third. So, in no way can you call this a tournament. It’s simply not.

However, you can’t call it a cash game, either. Cash games typically don’t have escalating blinds (although they could). Cash games allow players to buy in multiple times throughout the night. Cash games don’t have tournament payouts. So, while it more closely resembles a cash game, it takes aspects from tournament that are undesirable in cash games.

So, basically, what you are left with is a hybrid game that I don’t see as desirable. If you want to have a tournament, have a tournament. If you have players who can’t play that long, play a cash game. Why bastardize the tournament with undesirable features?
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To be clear, I agree about just playing a cash game. Way simpler. I wouldn't be a fan of this format (unless the players were just giving their money away, in which case wheeeee!).

I'm not sure if your comments apply to this game, and the reason is that I'm not sure it has structured payouts like a tournament (or reasonably even could). From my reading of the OP, I thought it was just a winner-take-all format, which would make more sense with the early cash-out rule. That's the perspective I was speaking from. And in that case, you can win anywhere between $0 and $2,000 (or net –$50 and $1,950, if you want to think in terms of P/L).
 
If I understand the problem correctly, you have players who can not stay longer than X amount of hours, but you want to allow them to play in the tournament. The hybrid cash/tourney proposal is just too weird, and frankly put I hate it. To solve your problem, which is one I had many years ago, just do 2 shorter turbo-style tournaments instead. My group of poker friends was filled with tourney-only folks, and in a 6 hour window we would do a 2 hour turbo and a 4 hour tournament right after. This seems like the best way to accomodate those who can’t stay long but really want to play a tournament. Throw that hybrid game into the muck.
 
My group actually did this (sort of) once or twice before COVID, and frankly I loved it.

But there are a few caveats. We are a very small group and very close. We were also there just to hang out and also play some poker. But winning money wasnt the 'goal'

While we didnt pay out for the people who left (they actually just went bust), the rest of us played till 2AM. And finally had to just call it quits. At that point we just cashed out what was there.

I say if you are going to do this, you need to make sure that the person leaving isnt taking a huge amount of the buy-in with them. That would kill it for the people that are left. Maybe limiting to a small % over their buy in. That way they cant get hot and walk out the door with little to no risk.

I liked it because one person isnt sitting there holding everything at the end of the night. Even though I was in the hole I still felt like I won something. In addition, we were at such low stakes playing with penny chips just kinda seems meh. Plus it is a lot easier to control the amount of money that is in the game without feeling short stacked, and bigger pockets can run the game. Some people are leary of playing cash games.

I am currently in the process of putting together a comprehensive strategy so that I can replicate that. But as this thread is going it certainly isn't a popular idea.
 
I had forgotten about this thread… My feeling months later is that either (a) the cashout pool would need to be a *lot* less than the tourney pool, or (b) cashouts should be penalized by how early they occur, or based on the number of players remaining. Cashout in Level 1? Take a -95% haircut. Cashout when there are 3-5 players left? Get closer to your actual chip or ICM equity in the remaining pool, minus a modest penalty.
 
Taghkanic said:
I had forgotten about this thread… My feeling months later is that either (a) the cashout pool would need to be a *lot* less than the tourney pool, or (b) cashouts should be penalized by how early they occur, or based on the number of players remaining. Cashout in Level 1? Take a -95% haircut. Cashout when there are 3-5 players left? Get closer to your actual chip or ICM equity in the remaining pool, minus a modest penalty.
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I kinda like the penalty method. Make the extra go to high hand or something stupid.
 
One of the questions I haven't seen answered - is there a second place prize? Or is this winner takes all (except for the guys who left early?)
To be clear, I don't like anything about this, unless there's a stiff penalty - like 50% - for cashing out early. But then, where would the other 50% of the chips go? It sounds to me more like the kinds of things people do when they don't know what they're doing, like, blinds double every time somebody is knocked out.
 
upNdown said:
One of the questions I haven't seen answered - is there a second place prize? Or is this winner takes all (except for the guys who left early?)
To be clear, I don't like anything about this, unless there's a stiff penalty - like 50% - for cashing out early. But then, where would the other 50% of the chips go? It sounds to me more like the kinds of things people do when they don't know what they're doing, like, blinds double every time somebody is knocked out.
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I feel like the best way to do it (on purpose) would be to determine the 'leave early' penalty by how long the person is there. For instance if it is midnight and they have to go and the game only lasts another hour, then the penalty should be lower. But If they miss a few hours it need to escalate a lot.
 
Darson said:
I see the majority of you are as confused as I am with this setup!

I'll have to plug my buddy for details but I think the majority of players stay all night and there are only one or two who have to leave early hence the cash-out option. I can imagine that if your game is say 4-6 hours but someone can only play 2 hours and they state that at the start, allowing them to cash out at the appointed time is fair. Allowing them to cash out whenever they feel like it probably won't work.
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What time is this tournament? What's this "can't stay until the end" stuff? People need their full 9 hours of sleep EVERY night, can't draw a little from the bank for a poker night? Blah.
 

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