Collusion at Final Table of Millionaire Maker!

Run a new tourney with seized prizemoney and name it in honour of these two shmucks.

Dragging on? How many days or weeks ago was this? Oh wait, only yesterday?

Thank you for not having any responsibilities in the area of tournament game integrity.

The thought of WSOP not paying out the top 2 is absolutely ridiculous. Heads up deals happen every single WSOP.

If anything should be in question, it's the $1M bonus from WPT.

WPT are really the ones to blame in this whole thing. Yes WPT and WSOP are competing with each other, but there are boundaries. Offering a $1M bonus for winning a tournament ran by your main competitor is a BS move.

ClubWPT is a garbage site, with garbage promotions (that they pay for by charging by far the highest rake in the industry).

The problem is that if the 1M guy knows he auto wins if he just gets to heads up, he would be incentivized to change his play with more players left as well.

Not seen evidence of this yet, but it's very clear from a game theory / ICM standpoint.

Money deals yes; this doesn't impact the sporting integrity of the event for the most part. "Who gets to win" deals do not happen.

Inb4

lol wut? WPT is getting amazing bang for their marketing bucks. You really think they give a **** about two guys chopping up that money? Hell the amazing press they'll get if the WSOP refuses or bans those players. WPT is getting exactly what they want out of this and I'm sure Doug Polk is going to make a video about it even promoting the brand further.

WSOP is in an interesting spot. They could join the rest of the world and change their rules and start helping out and acknowledging chops OR they could be hard asses about it and ban these guys create outrage in the community and odds run the same event next year and get just as many people as they did last year. Just add another day if there is some fallout. At the end of the day no other tour is going to create a $1,500 event with 12k runners and really people are going to show up and play no matter what decision they make.

WSOP has bracelets to market. Other series people really don't care about titles or trophies. The marketing doesn't work as well when there's some 5 way chop where 1 guy gets the bracelet.

Well, they already got the press and if they don’t pay the milly it’s all for free.

In my view WPT would look better if they refused to pay. It would send a message that they don’t allow cheating. I don’t read Twitter so I might be in minority if people in there really think this is ok and comparable to a standard money chop.

I didnt say anything about WPT thinks about it. I just hope these colluders get punished somehow. Looks like WSOP are looking into it so fingers crossed. Imagine being the third guy and realizing these 2 cheaters were colluding to get one guy the win.

Club wpt made a dumb promotion that incentivized problems like this. Everyone when they heard about the promotion wondered what would happen when one of the qualifiers gets heads up and there’s a huge monetary incentive to make a deal. This stuff probably goes on with people who really want bracelets/POTY as well honestly it’s just what happens you create dumb systems. I don’t blame college kids who shave points either while the ncaa profits and gives them nothing (before NIL) but everyone has differing opinions on who bears most responsibility in these type of situations

The promotion was definitely dumb (although maybe WPT wanted WSOP tournaments to look silly). WSOP really needs to accommodate deals as well (if they want the "show" to go on, just make them reserve a % of 1st to play for after deal).

That said, I think the regs are being too nihilistic about what the WSOP can mean to recs. Yes, bracelets are diluted to no end and they have no meaning to grinders, but I know a lot more recs than regs these days and a bracelet would be a dream for them. You just have to know that WSOP will want to defend this brand when the worst HU match of all time is livestreamed for an hour because a couple of robots have a side deal because of a crazy promo.

What would the reaction have been if Dwqn had done a deal when he was heads up and had all those bracelet bets?

WPT is definitely in a rough spot here.

For all the people saying "pay them out" and don't care for big corporations because "le corporations BAD" there's obviously going to be repercussions for poker players from this.

Likely this will discourage future rewards/bonuses/incentives like this being awarded, which hurts the game overall. These are typically great for attracting recs.

Also, why do we assume these guys made a deal once they were heads up? If I knew someone at the table had a $1mil extra incentive, wouldn't you just broker a deal and collude before to make sure he makes it to heads up?... i.e if there was collusion BEFORE the headsup, now this affects others at the table who aren't part of that agreement.

This is not the first time this kind of situation could have happened. Full Tilt definitely did a similar thing for the Main Event but even bigger (like...I think it was 10M if you qualified on FTP and then won the main). Through most of the 2000s and 2010s there were massive bracelet bets between pros that could have led to this kind of situation, except, you know, people knew back then not to cheat.

The WPT got blown. The WSOP got blown. Maybe they'll team up?

We will not se these one M promotions anymore, obviously. Players almost forced to act scummy.

Exactly.

What rough spot, back the in the day companies spent millions on patch deals through out the WSOP hoping that just the logo would get on TV. WPT hit the ultimate gin by having all this go down and getting amazing publicity and actual word of mouth about them. This is an easy slam dunk pay out and I'm sure they hope it happens again.

well this is wpt's fault for a promo that made this all possible and players should be paid as a result but this is why I've always said anyone making a deal at a final table should get permanently banned, no matter what it is NOT okay and people obviously do really care or we wouldn't be hearing all about right now. Casual players absolutely do not want to think this is normal or they won't enter and you want them to enter.

Well when they were 3 handed and Yaginuma had $40 mil chips, the 2 got it all in preflop with Yagi A4 diamonds and Carroll with A9 clubs where it looked totally standard with both players trying to win the pot. I don't think any discussion happened until they were heads up.

How does "Major poker tournament pays out colluders" as a headline sound? I get you're operating under "any publicity is good publicity", but we're not talking about Gillette or Pepsi doing a politically charged divisive viral ad to garner views and thus generate product sales. The value that WPT/WSOP offers is a fair tournament and experience for a poker player and that being put in question isn't great for sponsors.

I can just counter and say "it looked standard but I'm sure they colluded regardless".. neither of us know for sure. That's the issue.