Your opinion

1) We don't, but they would be awfully stupid to hide their collusion except for the HU if they had bad intentions

2) Your opinion, clearly the market does not care about it

Jesus, where do you people come up with these horrible analogies? What does someone playing blackjack have to do with buying a WPT title?

Would you expect Federer to get sanctioned if he loses his cool and starts winging a few frustration shots to lose a set? Would you expect Federer to be sanctioned if he blatantly gave the win to Nadal for a title by staying still as Nadal served and served everything wide, later to say this Sheikh who really loves Nadal payed me 100 million to throw this game, sorry gaiz.

No, I don't care for random donkaments, but show me an example of this please.

I'm not saying winning some random WPT title has much merit, but there should be some credibility to it. It leaves a bad taste for the casual audience following it and delegitimizes your game/event/sport. If you don't see this then I don't know what to tell you.

WPT does not seem to care either, and they host it. The market speaks, nobody cares.

There is a difference between chopping the money and go allin blind the next hand to flip for a winner and raising 99% of your stack and then fold to an Allin. Both should be called out. Very bad behaviour.

It's kind of funny, fame has to be the biggest trap of all time

He who has the gold makes the rules, and in poker, it's the players who are putting up the gold.

"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"

Has already been posted in this thread:
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/...ller-26642.htm

They chopped, and the guy with 4:1 chip disadvantage took the trophy. If the WPT would officially allow to chop and stop play immediately, people wouldn’t have to do the things discussed in OP.
That’s your opinion.

You would think that’s pretty obvious. Yet some people compare a game where people pay hundreds or thousands in rake to have a shot at winning other players money to a sport where players get paid for showing up and/or play for outside money.

That's messed up in it's own right, and goes to show you how why poker has such a low reputation if you can do such things openly and everybody seems ok with it.

If you want to chop, that's fine. But at least play the event out or leave it up to chance, predetermining the winner in any way is wrong no matter how you slice it.

I don't even understand what you're trying to say here. I was comparing winning a poker "title" to a sporting event, or other game event that gives out "distinctions" of any kind, not playing poker? I mean I get you guys are mostly tourney players commenting on this so don't expect you to be the brightest bunch, but holy **** to not find anything wrong with this is astonishing imho.

Remember the hate for William Kassouf when he took the trophy in an EPT event when it was chopped and he got much less than 2nd place?

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

I just don’t get why you are so obsessed with what other people do with their own money?

FWIW, I almost exclusively play cash games.

Chopped. Big deal.

If they were just playing for money, this wouldn't be a big deal.

But winning a WPT Championship has a lot of benefits beyond the money at stake in the tournament. For example, the article mentions points earned for WPT POY. Colluding over this point distribution affects the equity of everyone who is competing for the POY prize, not just the players who are in on the deal.

I don't care what players do with their money. But if the WPT sees this sort of collusion happening, they should disqualify the colluding players from earning POY points for that tournament, of qualifying for any "Tournament of Champions" events, etc.

valid point, does potentially hurt other's equity in that case.

In the case of such blatant point dumping they should just give both players second place points. The same could be said for whenever deals are made.

Casualties of war. It happens.

Instead of comparing it to an ITF final you would do better to compare a WPT tournament to a tennis club championship. Little or no outside sponsors putting up big money. No public buying tickets. The only people with a vested interest in the outcome are the players. And it they want to cut a deal between or among themselves it really isn't anybody else's business.

How are there no sponsors? Are there no TV deals in place, are there no companies sponsoring the players’ attire? Sure nobody buys anything, but it has an audience and exposure.

A club tournament gets no outside views except those who attend, and maybe a small mention in a local paper. This gets worldwide coverage by several poker news outlets, and can be broadcast on TV (doesn’t seem to be, but could have easily been so), or at least by live play by play. What small club tournament in small town x gets that? It’s much more comparable to an ITF event, and if it had been a bigger prizepool with TV deals, even bigger.

Now aside from points, potentially messing up others’ propbets and anything of the like, there’s the fact that with any kind of “title” there comes a degree of prestige. Will these two advertise themselves as having “bought” a WPT title or having “won it”? The latter was not achieved, no matter how close they had got. It’s shady to be allowed to do that. Maybe it can entail some opportunities in the future, or he is able to dupe some people into coaching based on that “title” or he gets a local advertising deal etc.

It’s not that big of an issue cause “lolpokerz” and everyone is already so used to worse things from this industry that not many care, but the notion still stands. On top of that it’s just simply bad publicity for the WPT, but guess if they’re fine with it and the players don’t mind, sure who cares. I was just arguing a pedantic point about how it comes across as.

The tournament hosts and sponsors do not contribute to the prize pool and the players are not making money off of them. The tournament hosts and media companies, and the advertisers who pay them, are making money off of the players. Yes, some players have sponsorship deals but those are separate agreements apart from any tournament prize pool.

If you or anyone else want to assign any value to someone else for winning a poker tournament that's your decision. I don't know too many poker players who do.

Could this have been done for tax reasons?

in the end, everything is done with taxes in mind.

This isn't true in the case of a WPT Championship. Winning WPT Player of the Year has real value beyond what was put up by the players in one particular tournament. And many players beside those involve in this deal, or even those who played in this tournament, have an equity stake in winning it.