Given the time he spent deliberating over that 3rd round offer, it seemed likely a deal was imminent, although at 11-box you are never quite sure whether outside influences will persuade the player otherwise at the last minute - but, credit to him, he was true to himself and didn't seem unduly concerned with the proveout.

Personally, I'd struggle to walk away from a board with the top 3 remaining, unless of course the offer was abnormally generous. Today's was quite generous, but not ridiculously so. (Boards I particularly tend to hate are those with the top 2 and nothing else, those create the real dilemmas.

Anyway, the 41st player to deal at 11-box and 10 have achieved OPWs, so just less than 25%, which is actually higher than the conversion rate for 8-box. Go figure, Mr Edmonds...

Thought I misheard the third offer when Noel said it was £18,000, as I could tell the previous offer of £10,000 meant a lot to Mark.

44% of the mean is worth considering on polarized boards. The only ways to extract more relative to the mean is to have 2 reds at 2-box, or have luck on your side in the preceding rounds. A blue and one of the top 3 at 2-box have limited expectation value percentage-wise, and at 5-box, 60% of the time you'll have 2 reds or less.

A surprising mistake from the banker, who didn't necessarily make too high an offer for the box, but allowed him to escape from a precarious board. He even seemed to realise this, encouraging Mark to play on with the promise of higher offers, and revealing his strategy that he would punish Mark if the board went wrong; a bit late when you've offered too much!

Felt it was inappropriate for Noel to start a guilt trip on him. No, you don't speak for everyone when you call his decision potentially "incredibly dumb", and deals can't be decided by proveouts, which have limited analytical value when the pressure's off the banker, who can offer anything he wants.

Either the decision to deal was sound when he made it, or it wasn't. If Mark was shown 500 random proveouts, with all the ups and downs, and offered the chance to change his mind, I doubt he would have.

Anyhow, enjoy the £18,000! That'll be £50 for the analysis.

A game sandwiched between 2 statements from Noel. The erroneous one at the beginning about the number of players who had won nothing and an entirely correct one right at the end about the deal not being right for the board but being right for the player.

Didn't like the statement before the second break from Noel that the decision could be "incredibly dumb" as he would never say that to players who have gambled large amounts and lost.

I expected the inflated proveout offer to be at 8-box today (was expecting old faithful at a minimum).

Interesting, it seems ages since we had a third offer deal. I can understand why Mark took it and it was clearly the right decision for him but at the same time it did feel far too early for the board.

I would have loved it to have translated into an OPW, the player getting out just before an apparantly strong board imploded but the fact it didn't leaves something of a bitter taste in the mouth.

Personally i wouldn't criticise Mark for dealing early any more than i would Gaz for not dealing but it was still a dissapointing result.