would you agree to this deal?

ICM deals tend to give the shorter stacks a bigger ‘gain’ because their portion of the prize pool is bigger than their expectation given their stack.
In truth it’s a pretty equitable way of ending a tournament early. Whether you accept the deal is influenced by many things.
How much, if any, edge you might have; the stack depth and structure; how often you will play with this group; are you keen to be finished; and does the jump from next prize to the ICM payout make a difference to you?

Personally I will often deal in local games, especially where stacks are pretty even or where blinds are such that the majority of hands will be played for stacks.

the blinds were 6k-12k

I feel like I lost the chance to make twice as much and same with the other players, they lost their chance too. It's an interesting debate

I don't think it's a bad deal, but there's one thing that I once heard that made me change the way I look at these spots.

They said if the money isn't hugely important to you one way or another, it's always better to play it out.

Their reasoning was that if you ever run deep in a big time tournament there will be pros who don't want to make a deal, and at that point you will wish you had all the prior experience you could get.

There are a number of reasons I don't make deals.

The first one is that in smallish tournaments like this I want to get in the practice of playing short handed so that if I make it into a final table at a big tournament I will have the practice. Now I have already had a lot of tournaments where I won or finished 2nd or 3rd or 4th so I don't need the practice really but I prefer to get it because we just don't play many hands in tournaments with 2, 3, or 4 players.

In general when we get down to less than 5 players there is at least one player who I have excellent reads on so I don't like giving away that edge.

I find that people make a lot of mistakes when we get to under 6 players left. Some people just don't open up their range. Some people are super ICM based and won't play many hands.

Sometimes I get offered better deals than what ICM says. And I basically always take those offers. At Mohegan Sun with 4 players left the Floor came over and asked us if we wanted an IRS chop where each player got basically $5,000 and the IRS wouldn't be told about the cash money. I was in 3rd and made an extra $1,250 or so... Another time I was offered over $5,000 which was more than anyone because I would have to pay taxes and others wouldn't have to. Since I always pay taxes on my winnings anyway it was a really good deal... There are also times when one or more players are scared to play against me and offer me a great deal. Once at Foxwoods with 3 players left I was the short stack. They took $14,000 each and gave me $13,000 which was an incredible deal. One time I was the short stack at Mohegan Sun after I lost AK vs AQ all in pot and there were 17 players left. The two chips leaders offered an even chop and we all took it. Lol.

If there is a trophy to the winner I usually prefer winning the trophy than taking a deal... One time at Foxwoods I had 2/3 of all chips HU in Day 2 of a $600 tournament. The other guy offered me the trophy if I gave him an extra $60. So I took the ICM deal and the trophy and gave him the $60.

The last thing for me is if all players left are good friends of mine. This happened in an EPT tournament in late 2023 in Prague. I got HU and the other guy was a close friend I had played with at Rebuy Stars Luka for the past year. He asked for an ICM chop and I said absolutely. He told me he would let me win the trophy (I had basically 75% of the chips) but in fact he enjoyed the game and we played for over 40 minutes. I finally won with 99 vs 88 all in preflop. He basically didn't care that he lost and in the end since I was already taking the 1st place ICM chop money I didn't really care either.

In this particular case if you don't agree to the deal a couple of things can happen. One is everyone hates you and tries to knock you out. At Foxwoods that happened and I ended up chopping HU when they shut down the casino (post Covid this is what they do at 1am on Sundays) because a bunch of players tried to knock me out and called all ins with hands they should have folded. The other thing is that they may offer you a better than ICM deal. Especially if you are good. And of course one time I was chip leader (but not by much) with 6 players left at Foxwoods and they wanted an ICM chop but I wanted the practice, and they ganged up on me and knocked me out in 5th place (and then did the ICM chop).

With absolutely no mathematical basis for my position, I always chop private games (but am never the first to offer an chop) and never chop at the casino/online.

The private games I play in are generally friendly and always juicy. Being that guy who never chops is a great way to stop getting invited and so is very -EV imo.

In public games I couldn’t give af less what people end up thinking and I always play for the win because that’s why we play tournaments imo, to win (or at least win more). Plus even as a short stack I like my odds to ladder up generally.

ICM deals like this are usually fair, especially if stacks are close and money isn’t huge. If you want practice or the thrill of winning, you could play it out, but taking a bit extra guaranteed is smart too.