With Full Tilt Poker‘s new software upgrade roll out last week is a feature that’s been getting a lot of attention in online poker tournament circles lately, which makes it worthy of mention here. It goes by many names – a deal-making option or facility, and tournament chops being just a few – but it refers to the same general gist:

Players making it to the Final Table of any tournament can opt to express their interest in making a deal so as to avoid playing out the rest of the cards and risk losing everything. Once all the remaining players at the final table (whether it’s 9 or 2) have clicked the “Make a Deal” button to show their interest, the game is paused – at which point players have 20 minutes to agree on a deal, based on a selection of options, including: splitting the pot proportionately based on chip stacks, going by the so-called Independent Chip Model, or composing a Custom Deal that all remaining player agree upon.