The Main Event's $10 Million Guarantee Skews Payouts

The Main Event's $10 Million Guarantee Skews Payouts

Thursday, 17 July 2014

Poker is a game of information and analysis and since the WSOP Main Event was put on a three-month hiatus one player has been crunching some numbers.

In an effort to see how much the $10 million guaranteed first place prize has impacted on the payout structure of this year's ME final table, 2+2's 'RedOak' performed an ICM calculation for the November Nine.

Taking into account each of the final nine's chip stack as well as the standard payouts, 'RedOak' was able to concluded that the "two chip leaders would have to finish 1st or 2nd to do better than ICM" and this is something they will do "less than 50%" of the time."

Breaking it down further, the calculations show that chip leader Jorryt van Hoof would bank $4,334,801 if he was to agree to a nine-way chop, while the shortest stack, Bruno Politano, would take home $2,285,194 if a deal went down.

Aside from looking at the current situation regarding payouts, 'RedOak' also posited that if 90 more people were paid in the Main Event and money was taken off the top then fewer would people in the US would pay a higher rate of tax on their winnings.

It's usually the case that deals aren't allowed during the WSOP so we're unlikely to see the players divide up their cash this time, but the ICM analysis of the final table certainly provides an interesting perspective on the $10 million guarantee.



Tags: WSOP 2014, November Nine, Main Event, ICM