Poker pet peeve

After playing in a poker tournament yesterday, I have a new #1 poker pet peeve -- when the short stack initiates talk about chopping.*

I don't mean a situation where it's heads up or the stacks are basically even and it's a reasonable discussion. It's the scenario where someone realizes he's going to bubble (bust out short of the money) and tries to make a ridiculous deal to salvage something for getting "close".

Yesterday we were down to six players where the top four got paid. The guy on my right says, "if we chop now, we'd each get $100 (on a $30 buy-in tournament)". I was second in chips at the time and he and one other player had pretty short stacks. I thought why on earth would I or any of the top three stacks take even money, since we aren't close to even in stacks. And given the short stacks, why would any of the big stacks chop now since waiting a few hands is likely to knock out a player with zero money.

I'm not opposed to chopping, though I get closer and closer to the viewpoint of a friend of mine who says he never chops, when I keep hearing crazy offers like this.

* For those who don't play poker or don't play tournaments very often, here's a bit about chopping. Tournament payouts tend to be very top heavy -- yesterday was $295 for 1st, $195 for second, $95 for third. Typically at the end of a small tournament (the stuff you and I can afford, not the stuff you see on TV), every player has a small stack relative to the size of the initial bet. So one hand can dramatically shift the distribution of chips, and it's typically hard to fold. Thus you aren't really playing poker in the traditional sense as much as you're hoping to get lucky. If the stacks are close to even, effectively you're drawing straws to see who gets $95, who gets $195, and who gets $295. To avoid this wide variation based almost totally on luck, players often agree to chop the prize pool, not necessarily evenly, at this stage. When we got to two players yesterday, we did wind up chopping with me taking a smaller cut of the money since I had fewer chips.