You are the Tournament Director: Deals and Collusion

In a PLH competition in Walsall there are 6 players left in the final and first prize is about £50,000 which is top heavy at over 50% of the prize pool. Player A is chip leader with about 40% of the chips and the other five players want to discuss a deal to flatten out the prize structure. Player A refuses but the others still want to do a deal. The other five openly say that they will split any prize money that they receive. How do you rule?

Matt Savage Matt:
I would definitely not sanction any money split at this point. I would pay the players, I don't know if there were any tax implications? I'll presume no. I would definitely pay the players for where they finished and I would actually try to bluff them. I would say that the players are not forced to give you your money if they leave with a higher prize than you got, meaning that you’re doing this at your own risk and try to bluff them out of making the deal by saying that. Saying that, we are going to pay each player the prize that they should receive and therefore we are not going to sanction this deal, and you know if they made the deal away from the table there is nothing I could do really in that case, but I would definitely strongly urge the players that this is not a kosher thing to do and tell them that anything paid out would be paid exactly by the [original] payout structure. I don’t think there is anything you can really do.

Thomas Kremser Thomas:
I will protect player A as good as I can. I will warn the other players to play correct and would not be shy to give penalties to the players if I find out that the play is incorrect.

Jack Jack:
If a deal is not unanimous it is illegal. If players insist on collusion I would award first place to player A and split remaining money among other players.

Liam Flood Liam:
If any one player doesn’t want to make a deal they cannot do a deal. Howeer, you must allow for this fact: if they leave the table at the break and decide to split 2nd-6th there is nothing you can do about it. I wouldn’t have any respect for the other 4 people if they did this though.

Mel Mel:
If player A refuses to do a deal then play should commence, however because the other 5 people have openly said that they will split the prize money, this means that chip leader is battling against 4 others and not even. If truth be told and I had heard that they want to split the prize money I would do a chip count and finish it there and then. Its not on that 1 person wants to play fair and square and the others want to flatten it out.

In saying that structures need to be sorted out so they aren’t as top heavy and if you pay 1st somewhere between 30 – 35% then that would be a better structure.

Marty Wilson Marty:
They can do what they like with the prize money as long as I don’t see people passing chips to one another. This happens all the while, there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s negotiable between players. They will still receive the correct prize money for each placing, what they do with the prize money after that is negotiable amongst them and as far as I’m concerned there’s no deals.

The Mob Verdict

This happened in a PLH final at Grosvenor Walsall in November 2003.

The chip leader was Ram. When Ram objected to the deal it was suggested that the deal was done without him. One of the players said ‘don’t worry; we know we’ve done the deal, let’s carry on and play, we’ll split anything we get’. This was a little worrying for Ram.

This situation was asked as a YATTD question with the main issue being possible collusion. Matt never mentions collusion in his answer. He is more focused on not being instrumental in the deal and not responsible for players paying each other out. We are certain though that if Matt saw or thought that there was any collusion he would act accordingly. Marty gives a similar answer and believes that ‘they can do what they like with the prize money’.

Thomas reads the question as we wrote it and it is good that he warns the players. Liam’s answer is a little soft saying that they ‘cannot do a deal’ but that ‘there is nothing you can do about it’.

Mel says she would do a chip count. We presume that she means she would distribute the prize money on a pro rata basis rather than give placings as to where each player was positioned chip wise. To force players to do this may favour any weak players in the final and disadvantageous any more skilled ones.

Jack gives the strongest answer by far. This was suggested in Walsall. That Ram should be given first place and then the others could split their money if they so wished. Jack’s approach leaves no room for doubt whereas the other answers where play goes on could leave a bad feeling about whether or not the final was played out fairly and that the deals did not affect a single play in any way. We prefer Jacks way although there is still the problem of ‘silent’ deals.

The Omaha tournament was shortly about to start and most of the players wanted to play in that as well. The Hold-em tournament was decided on chip count. Ram was awarded first place and the official prize money was re-worked on a pro rata per chip positions.

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