Ah, Leah! Obvious heads-up chip dump at WPT Fallsview allows Mike Leah to buy a title

[Dan Druff]

Pretty absurd story today out of WPT Fallsview (Niagara Falls, Canada).

Mike Leah was playing heads up with Ryan Yu at the Main Event. First place was $C451k, second was $C301k.

Here's the way the hands went down:

Heads-Up Chip Counts
The players are taking an unscheduled break.

Ryan Yu - 10,800,000 (90 bb)
Mike Leah - 4,715,000 (39 bb)


Hand #94: Mike Leah Takes the Chip Lead

Ryan Yu raises to 4,000,000 from the button on the first hand of heads-up play, Mike Leah (pictured) reraises all in for 4,695,000 from the big blind, and Yu folds.

Mike Leah - 8,735,000
Ryan Yu - 6,780,000


Hand #95: Mike Leah

Mike Leah limps in from the button, and Ryan Yu raises to 5,000,000 from the big blind.

Leah reraises all in for 8,715,000 and Yu folds.

Mike Leah - 13,755,000
Ryan Yu - 1,760,000


Hand #96: Mike Leah

Ryan Yu raises to 1,700,000 from the button, and Mike Leah (pictured) pushes all in for 13,735,000 from the big blind.

Yu folds, and Leah captures this pot.

"When you're beat, you're beat!" says Yu.

Mike Leah - 15,475,000
Ryan Yu - 40,000

At that point, with Yu severely crippled, they auto-all-inned for a few hands, and Leah won.

https://www.worldpokertour.com/event...8-2/#eventTab2

These were all of the hands played heads up. As soon as Tim Rutherford busted in 3rd place, Leah and Yu took an "unscheduled break", obviously discussed the chip dump, then came back and blatantly did so.

Note that Yu had more than a 2:1 chip lead when heads up play started, and intentionally dumped the title to Leah!

WPT does not allow players to make deals.

The event is not televised, so that part will not be an issue.

Clearly this chip dump was done for one purpose only. Mike Leah wanted the WPT Title, and perhaps the Player of the Year points.




Since it was heads up, what's the big deal?

Well, a few things...

First off, Mike is cheating others in the Player of the Year race, as he really only earned 2nd place in reality. At the very least, WPT should take away his 1st place points and replace them with 2nd place points, so other people aren't affected by this.

Second, it just looks awful. This was the Main Event. How could they not know this would be reported on, and would make poker look terrible?

Third, it affects the play prior to that. While it seems the deal was discussed after the 3rd place finisher busted, what if it was discussed earlier? Then we have two players who knew that they only needed to survive to heads-up, while everyone else thought they were playing to win it. That's actually a fairly big strategy change, and it's not fair that only two players may have been aware of that. It's not unreasonable to believe that Mike and Ryan may have discussed the possibility of this earlier, and simply took the break to discuss how it would be accomplished.

Finally, it's breaking the rules. You may not like the WPT rules of no dealmaking, but those are the rules they set. If you don't like it, don't play. You can't play it and then decide to make up your own rules to replace the ones you don't like.


What's interesting is the fact that neither apparently thought this was wrong (or would look bad), as they both did it so blatantly. Both players are tournament regulars, and could have easily engineered a much more believable-looking chip dump, where likely no one would have even noticed. Instead, they did it in obnoxiously ridiculous fashion, almost as to give a big middle finger to the WPT and its no-dealmaking rule.

Here's a picture of Ryan Yu:




What do you guys think should happen to these two?

On a side note, this was likely not due to tax liabilities, as both players were Canadian. In Canada, only professional poker players are required to pay taxes on winnings, but most can massage the definition of "professional" and still pay no taxes on their wins. A good discussion of the Canadian poker tax situation is found in this article on Pokernews.

[Dan Druff]

The WPT interview with Leah is hilarious, given what went down.

https://www.worldpokertour.com/event...8-2/#eventTab2

"It hasn't sunk in yet,” Leah said after winning. “Winning a WPT has been near the top of my goal list for a long time, especially getting so close almost exactly three years ago when I lost to Anthony Zinno heads up at LAPC, so I've been pretty hungry to get back here again since that.”

[Dan Druff]

On a side note, in 2006, I was personally at a final table where a title was bought.

Liz Lieu was relatively new to the poker scene, and wanted to take advantage of the poker boom in order to get sponsorships. However, despite appearing on TV at a WSOP final table in 2005, she still had not yet won a tournament, which was hurting her brand.

She ended up at a final table with me at the LA Poker Classic -- at a $1060 Limit Holdem event. Not the most prestigious event, but Liz desperately wanted any kind of win. The structure at that tournament was horrible, and everyone was short stacked when the final table began, making it a card catching contest.

I went out 8th.

Liz, however, made it to heads up with unknown San Jose area player Jason Heidema. However, Heidema held a 60%-40% chiplead, and Liz feared that the title would elude her once again.

She made a deal with Jason to be "awarded" first at that point, in exchange for Heidema getting larger prize money.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=16307

1st Liz Lieu $40,453
2nd Jason Heidema $52,013



Cardplayer Magazine comedy writer Max Shapiro was working as a tournament reporter, and poker was so big at that point to where full time tournament reporters were hired for limit holdem events at the LAPC. (Hard to imagine, but true!)

Shapiro, a longtime veteran of the game, had never seen anything like this before, so he wrote up the full story as to what happened.

I checked later that evening to see who won, and was floored by the story of the person holding 40% of the chips heads up being declared the winner.

Additionally, I disliked Liz personally, as she had always been unjustifiably nasty and bitchy to me at the cash games at Commerce. Liz saw herself as one of the "hot chicks" of the game, and pretty much felt everyone else was beneath her. My first encounter with her involved her yelling at me when I was off on the side discussing a rake issue with a floorman -- something which had nothing to do with her, and wasn't holding up the game.

Anyway, suffice to say that I enjoyed bringing it to the public's attention regarding Liz's purchase of a title, and I did exactly that.

As soon as I did so, Liz panicked, contacted Max Shapiro, and browbeat him into modifying the story. In the new version, Liz claimed that she made the deal "for charity", so she could donate some of her winnings to poor people in her home country of Vietnam. Clearly this made no sense, as she was actually GIVING UP money to be crowned the winner, and also could have just as easily donated to the charity if she were named 2nd place finisher with the same money.

This made her look even more foolish, as I pointed out the story modification and the ludicrousness of her new claims.

She absolutely hated me after this, but I didn't care.

It took another year until Liz would finally get an actual tournament win.


More recently, William Kassouf bought an EPT title, and also got the points. However, this was through an official deal, and not a chip dump.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=384120

1st England William Kassouf €532,500 $555,619 224.19
2nd Canada Patrick Serda €719,000 $750,216 185.65
3rd Denmark Tue Hansen €351,000 $366,239 164.15

[Dan Druff]

Good post from 2+2, from a user named "likes":

Truth, honesty, ethics

These things are not complicated. They are not subject to interpretation.

He bought a place in history on a prestigious trophy. He bought a title. He bought a lifetime invitation to a winners only tournament. He did not earn these things.

Sure, the WPT ought to allow the chop. They also ought to have rules in place that when chopping, both players forfeit the $15k TOC entry (give it to charity), that the title will be declared vacant, and nobody's name will go on the trophy.

Can't argue with any of that.

Here's the 2+2 thread, in case anyone cares: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...t-win-1704111/

[Drawingdead]

So there was chip dumping between two people at a final table. I don’t think there’s any ethical concern here, every player enters a tournament for different reasons. If YU wanted guaranteed first place money (or more) where’s the problem with that? I would make the same trade all day.

[Dan Druff]

So there was chip dumping between two people at a final table. I don’t think there’s any ethical concern here, every player enters a tournament for different reasons. If YU wanted guaranteed first place money (or more) where’s the problem with that? I would make the same trade all day.

See the post above this one.

Regarding Yu, I blame him less, because it's tough to turn down a lot of money you're offered in exchange for dumping a title you don't care about. Sure, we can sit here on our high horse and claim we would have refused Leah's deal if offered, but the truth is that most poker players would have accepted it, and I realize that.

My bigger problem is with Leah. He paid money to buy a WPT Title when behind in chips.

If Leah were ahead in chips and bought that title at that point, that would still be wrong (for reasons already mentioned in the original post), but not nearly as bad, because at least such a deal would be equivalent to what happens at tournaments which allow deals.

The big problem here was that Leah was behind in chips by more than a 2:1 margin, and he used money to award himself a major poker title.

If this is allowed, all WPT poker titles essentially become garbage.

[Dan Druff]

BTW, some people have been speaking in Mike's defense, stating that this is the WPT's fault.

"If only the WPT allowed deals, this wouldn't happen," they're saying.

"Deals happen all the time in tournament poker, even when not specifically allowed," they're lecturing.

This is not about an under-the-table financial deal to prevent variance!

That I would understand, and in fact wouldn't even be criticizing.

The problem here is that Mike Leah was behind in chips by more than a 2:1 margin, and bought the WPT title at that point.

That has nothing to do with the WPT allowing or not allowing deals. This has to do with buying titles from behind, which should never be allowed, especially at a prestigious poker tournament such as the WPT.

Others have stated that this is "none of our business", provided that Mike and Ryan came to this agreement once they were heads up.

I also disagree. In addition to the aforementioned Player of the Year and Tournament of Champions implications, part of the allure of tournament poker comes from the titles.

There is a certain amount of pride players take in having major titles, such as WPT, EPT, WSOP, etc.

If you allow well-heeled players to buy those titles when behind in chips, the prestige of those titles goes away. It becomes a joke. There's no point to have tournament brands, titles, bracelets, or any of that, if you're going to allow players to buy titles.

I've also heard the excuse, "Well, it happens in local daily tournaments all the time, so why is it such a big deal here?"

That's because there's little-to-no prestige or recognition for winning a daily tournament, so it matters much less. Comparing the integrity of a daily tournament to the WPT is like comparing a sandlot softball league title to the baseball World Series. On the bigger stage, where winning is considered a large accomplishment, the standard of integrity needs to be higher and more enforced.