Deal Or No Deal?
We're not talking about a typical tournament with, say, a $50K prize pool here.
There's going to be almost $1.7M on that final table, meaning a chop would pay each player almost $300K. That's $225K more than the $75K sixth place prize. For most mortgage-paying Americans $225K is too much money to put on the luck of the draw from a deck of cards.
This is the same question faced by the players on Deal Or No Deal. "Do I settle for this life-changing amount of money I already have or risk it going for even more?"
If you refuse to chop this kind of money you risk the fate of so many players who took one case too many on Howie Mandel's show.
For most of us, $300K would be a life-changing amount of money while $75K would not. For most of us the difference to our lives of $300K versus $75K would be more significant than the difference between $300K and $1M. The additional $700K would be really cool, but not as life-changing as the first $225K.
Say Bill Gates were to offer you a choice between a guaranteed $300K, or a roll of the dice. Rolling one through five would take $225K off the table. Rolling a six would add $700K. What would you choose?
It's the Law Of Diminishing Marginal Utility, applied to cash prizes. My Economics professor used this example to explain the Law Of Diminishing Marginal Utility: A man crawling through the desert dying of thirst encounters a Bedouin on a camel who offers to sell him a pint of water for $1000. He gladly takes the deal. Can the Bedouin now sell him another gallon for $8000? No, because the first pint had much more utility for the dying man than the next gallon.
Refusing to chop a $1.7M final table means you believe that it's worth risking a guaranteed $225K to try for an additional $700K on a 5:1 card draw. It means you don't believe the difference between $75K and $300K is significant enough to not put it to a card draw, and that the next $700K is just as important to you.
It's an individual choice that I hope everyone at that final table makes rationally.
My apologizes. I was wrong.
There will be no split of the pot at the final final table. I won't agree with it (assuming I'm at the final table). I would rather get 6th and take the risk, than surrender a possible first place.
