Sunday, September 27, 2009

Offered chop in the SB

This is an interesting situation that sometimes comes up playing live. It's folded to you in the small blind. Neither you nor the big blind has looked at your cards yet. The big blind offers to chop the hand.

Now in $1/$2 live it doesn't often fold into the blinds. But it can happen sometimes, especially if some people are sitting out and away from the table. What a chop means is that the SB and BB both just pull their blinds back and the hand is over.

I've been offered a chop three times in the SB. All three times I accepted it. I think it's a good deal for the SB. Both the SB and BB have a random hand (since neither has looked at his cards yet). Given that BB has position on SB throughout the hand then with position the situation is profitable for BB and unprofitable for SB. So I think it's a good result for SB to accept a chop and thus break even on the hand.

Plus there's other considerations live around accepting a chop. The first time I was offered a chop in the SB the others at the table were keen for me to accept it. That makes sense because then the hand is immediately over and the folders can get a new hand right away without having to wait for a blinds battle to play out. So it keeps the game friendly and fast. Keeping the game fast and friendly is valuable so there's a meta game consideration to accepting the chop and quickly moving on to the next hand.