Does make sense if he doesn't give himself an edge playing HU.

When yu are afraid of gambling, yu surrender.

Mike was the more courageous player. Sometimes courage alone wins you the fight. So he does deserve this title.

The players were allowed to do what they wanted with the remaining prize pool, and others are allowed to think it's a bit silly to be proud of 'winning' an event where you won less money and had significantly fewer chips than your opponent at the effective end of the tournament.

This won't happen, because tennis is much more of a skill game than poker is and so some 50th ranked player ain't going to be in the final up 2 sets to 1.

No player would make that deal, because winning a grand slam final is worth more than the prize money.

On the other hand, someone in position to win a WPT title thought so little of it, he was willing to sell it at the drop of a hat. The money was worth more than the title.

Tournament loses all credibiity by episodes like this
'Title' is meaningless if it can be 'won' in this fasion


Personally, I think they should both be DQ'd for collusion, and the title awarded to the 3rd place finisher

Mike Leah's own explanation shows they colluded and his opponent dumped chimps and threw the match.

Seems cut and dried to me

How many entrants do you think the WPT is going to lose over this? Give me your best guess.

It's not about "being done" or players shunning them, it's about legitimacy. The fact that you think it's wrong but don't care just shows you everything that's wrong with poker being considered legitimate and why there has been little headway over more than a decade in regulating it.

There used to be a time where multi accounting was perfectly fine across the board, then people thought wait a minute, this is kind of messed up. Then pokerstars changed their TOC, people closed down duplicate accounts and those who continued to do it were banned. Other sites still allowed it to go on. Now which one would you view as more legitimate nowadays? Did people stop playing at those sites after realizing allowing multiple accounts was kind of messed up? Probably some, but doubt there was much of an impact at first.

The same thing is happening here, something very shady occurring and everybody glossing over it cause lolpoker. Well it's that kind of attitude that sets it back. What needs to be done is for the rules to change to prevent things like buying titles/1st places in the future. Not a very hard thing to implement.

See above.

Fully agree with this. Just because people will ignore this incidence doesn't mean it doesn't hurt poker.

WPT has an opportunity here. To be an example of what a poker brand can be or to be just another greedy business.

Transperancy, honesty and integrity are words not associated with poker. But WPT can change it.

And they have an easy scapegoat for it as well. 2 greedy pros. Not taking action here would be a great missed marketing opportunity for WPT.

They shouldn't be disqualified from the event, they should just be disqualified from POY contention.

I’d take this deal in a heartbeat if the other player says that’s the only way he’s willing to chop and I don’t think I have an edge HU.

More importantly: If I ever played that event, I would have sold the majority of my action and my backers would basically force me to take the variance free deal. They don’t care if I have a shiny trophy or not.

Good one! One more step and we can call it a gentlemen’s sport..

Players can always make deals for money. WPT can't control that.

But the championship trophy and POY points are not part of the player generated prize pool. Not directly. They are separately awarded.

In the event of a deal/unfairly contested heads up match, the trophy and the points should be stripped from the players.

Is the WPTs official stance that chops aren't permitted at all, or that they simply won't help facilitate them? I suspect it is the latter, in which case why is this even an issue to discuss? They broke no rules. If other PoY chasers don't like it, they need to complain to the WPT and demand a policy change, not to Mike.

Betting 98% of your stack and then folding to a raise preflop is not against the rules. But it is obviously collusion. Most collusive actions do not technically violate the rules of poker. But if two players are clearly colluding it is certainly the responsibility of the tournament officials to take action against them.

In Leah's case, the players were not colluding against other players in the same tournament, but against players who won other tournaments on the same circuit and were competing for POY points.

If you don't care then stop posting in this thread. Do us all a favor.

I agree with you. Bad for poker and tournament poker and the WPT should grow a set and do something.

There is no issue with the two making an ICM chop deal when heads-up play begins. If the two made an ICM chop but played for the actual title and trophy then who cares.

The issue is that Mike Leah was willing, and even offered, to make an ICM chop deal that included chip dumping for the "win" when he's at a 2.3:1 chip deficit. This is really beyond the pale and has no place in poker if WPT wants any kind of integrity in their tournaments and "winners".

How Mike can look himself in the mirror and feel proud like he "won" the event after a 2.3:1 deficit chip dump is beyond me.

Agree 100% with this too. There was an admittance of collusion by both of these individuals. Plus it leaves questions and the possibility of collusion by the 2 of them before the heads up match. Were they soft playing each other? Maybe they dumped chips to one another throughout the final table or even earlier. Yeah okay to the Mike Leah lovers on here, yeah that most likely didn't happen but you never know.

The people like kelvis and pt lou who don't care that they did this shows what is wrong with poker. Ethics. All but gone.

Are you making the distinction based on the prize pool being made up of the players' own money?

Because I don't think anyone is arguing that the players have the absolute right to chop up the MONEY. It's manipulating the actual winner of the event that is the issue.

I get that a WPT title isn't as prestigious as a tennis grand slam, but that doesn't mean it has to be worthless. Shouldn't a WPT title have some meaning? How does that not benefit the game?

Like I said before, if there are POY points involved then they should both get 2nd place points. I actually suggested that. No question about that. Do I think it is ok to chop up the money and flip for who wins or outright give someone the win? Hell yes.

Multi accounting is actually cheating, and don't give me crap like "oh but 10 years ago you would not have said that". This is not cheating (except for the points that could theoretically be used for cheating).

This is not the reason for people to consider poker legitimate. It's more the gambling addictions that come from it, the $400M+ that was stolen back some years ago, the predatory aspect of it, the fact that it is not a pure skill game, the actual cheating in the game that takes place, bots overrunning sites etc etc. If you think this contributes even slightly then I don't know what to say.

An 83rd ranked player won a slam last year.


That's true, but if a player took a dive for whatever reason, that would be bad, right? Forget about the Federers and Williamses who are super wealthy anyway. What if the #12 and #17 players make the finals of a slam, and one of them bets $10 mil on his opponent and loses on purpose, that would be bad, right? It's bad for poker too. Less bad than it would be for tennis, but still bad. When you have a so-called competition and the players are not playing to win, it erodes the value of the competition. WPT is one of the major brands in the game of poker. Even if you never play a tournament, any poker player should at least care a little bit about the perception of the WPT, you all know that tournaments doing well can only benefit the cash games as well.

It doesn't matter if it *would* be bad. The problem here isn't that there's something wrong with the players. The problem is that the trophy is worthless. The players have no respect for the WPT.

edit: well it depends what you mean, no respect as in no value in winning the title, or no respect as in they don't care if they **** on the 'institution'

If that were true, why would Mike Leah make an ICM chop deal conditional on chip dumping the title to him from a 2.3:1 chip deficit? It seems he cared very much about the trophy doesn't it.

Great "win" there Mike. WPT should be embarrassed.

A couple of people have mentioned this, and I dont think its fully true. While the physical WPT trophy might only have the scrap metal/whatever value, for things like potential sponsorship it could be huge. A player adding a WPT main event title to their already impressive resume could get that pending sponsorship. For players that are already sponsored, such a win might earn them a bonus due to the media/press attention they receive

I had a piece of someone about 10 years back who got 3 handed and did a deal (casino allows chops and the tournament ended right there). The chip leader really wanted the trophy, which apparently was worth about $2K itself. Chip leader gave up an additional $10K or so after ICM calculations as he said that the win would look good with his site sponsorship