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.