He made a preliminary statement on Allen Kessler's page, of all places:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Leah
I’ll respond in much more detail soon as I’m flying red-eye to Europe to play Party Poker Millions Main event tomorrow. BUT the words buy a title are very wrong - the title was negotiated but I did not give up a penny of equity. It was an even ICM chop based on chips with me being awarded the win.
We were forced to play it out after making the deal so we just tried to get it over as fast as possible while making very obvious a deal was made.
No talk of any deal was brought up by anybody until we got HU.
Here is my response, which I posted in that same thread:
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Mike, thank you for responding so quickly, and I look forward to seeing your more detailed response later. However, I have a few questions for you.
1) If the goal was to just "get it overwith quickly" after you agreed to an under-the-table, ICM chop, why were the chips dumped TO you, if you were the notably shorter stack? Wouldn't it have made more sense for the shorter stack to dump to the larger one?
2) It seems clear to me that you wanted the title, despite having not earned it yet. (You clearly earned the right to play for it heads up, but were a dog at that point to win the title.) What were the reasons you wanted that title awarded to you, rather than chip leader Ryan Yu?
3) What do you think is fair regarding the TOC seat you won, as well as the POY points awarded for that "win"? Do you think you deserve 1st place points for this?
4) Would you be open to voluntarily having your POY points downgraded to 2nd place points?
I do want to state that I have no personal issue with you, and in fact don't really know you. I do feel that you're a great tournament player, and your reputation in poker has always been excellent.
I do not believe you did this with bad intentions, but unfortunately your actions adversely affected the POY race, and have somewhat cheapened the entire concept of winning a WPT title.
What's done is done, but hopefully there will be some fair resolution to this.