Bryn Kenney is an accomplished high limit tournament player, but that didn't stop him from resorting to buying a title at the Aussie Millions.

Here's part of the report from calvinayre.com:

Hinrichsen – 15,365,000
Kenney – 4,870,000
Del Vecchio – 4,830,000

With three players left, Del Vecchio took the chip lead when his quad sixes got maximum value from Hinrichsen, who was unfortunate enough to river a straight. Then Kenney then scrapped and scraped his way into a chip lead that would change hands over the next hundred hands, until the three sat down and negotiated a deal, turning the conclusion of the most prestigious tournament in the Southern Hemisphere into a damp squib.

Kenney wouldn’t budge.

He wanted the win.

The pair gave it to him.

The $923,269 that Kenney collected means he’s now earned $26,623,758 in live tournament earnings, good enough for a ninth place finish. Dan Smith drops out of the Top 10, and Phil Ivey takes tenth – only another $19m to go, Bryn.

Final Table Results

1. Bryn Kenney – $923,269*
2. Mike Del Vecchio – $922,953*
3. Andrew Hinrichsen – $796,410*
4. Clinton Taylor – $350,417
5. Mathew Wakeman – $275,908
6. Gyeong Byeong Lee – $224,180
7. Hamish Crawshaw – $175,571
https://calvinayre.com/2019/02/04/po...tz-takes-100k/

Most notably, Kenney had fewer than 20% of the chips 3-handed, AND he didn't knock out a single person at the final table, yet was awarded both the title and the most prize money, just slightly more than #2.

I always felt that this form of "deal making" should never be allowed, and that the winner always should have the highest amount of chips when play ends.

About exactly a year ago, Mike Leah won a title through obvious chip-dumping heads up. Leah took a ton of heat for this at the time, but eventually the furor died down.

On a much smaller stage and a long time ago, I was at a final table where this happened, though I was out of the tournament by that point. In that case, Liz Lieu bought a title when holding 40% of the chips heads up, because the title was important to getting sponsorships, and her opponent was an unknown software engineer from northern CA, and just wanted the money. I called that one out, both because it bothered me and because Lieu had mistreated me a few weeks prior at a cash game.