if you check player forums, 2plus2, cardschat you’ll see a majority support the choppers.
It happens all the time in the HU, organizers just pay and move on. The third player who refused the deal, is said to have been bumped through soft play. But that’s something that happens frequently too.
Fact is poker has become a spectator sport because of all the streaming and cable deals, but all that money goes to the organizers. Same for sponsorships. The players who are central to the whole industry, have to pay to play.
So really not many support the organizers.
Like I said I’m only slightly familiar with chopping the pot of one hand but not a series of HU hands between two players until only one remains.
Again, why did these two go thru the motions of playing HU?
I really don’t know if this is allowed and maybe someone can provide more info. Going thru a series of HU hands sounds even more like that there is / was chip dumping going on.
I don’t use these other forums which you’ve mentioned. My info has been from articles about poker events.
Because Yaginuma, the guy who came back and won, was going to receive an extra $1 million on top of the 1st place prize money if he won the tournament from ClubWPT Gold. Carroll would have received just the first place prize money and nothing extra if he won. He was behind at the start of heads up play by a huge margin, 9 to 1, so they had to play to get him ahead. If it was switched around where Yaginuma was up 9 to 1 they easily could have gotten away with it.
If Carroll won the prize pool for 1st and 2nd would have been $2.26m so the chop would be $1.13m each. By having Yaginuma win he added the ClubWPT Gold 1m promotion to the pot so now the chop is $1.63m each. They had to play in order to allow Yaginuma to win.
I have a really dumb question… if the winner wins
Cant he just get the money and then split it with
The other guy after the game???
PLEASE=- understand, a million-dollar bonus for only the one guy (the one who had like 10% of the chips heads up until funny stuff)…
Yes, I’m sure actually this happens all the time with two guys that end up head to head with equal stacks. They can agree to play it out like normal but already decided to split the 1st and 2nd prize amounts equally. As the article stated in the beginning this happens in tons of tourneys and is allowed even but in WSOP events it’s not allowed but again it’s hard to prove even if someone did do it. There was just a lot of circumstantial evidence to show the guys in this tourney did. The chip leader not playing like a normal player would, the whole bonus to the second place guy being motivation.
Totally agree, I mean, it’s the final pot, they can do whatever they want amongst themselves as finalists, though it won’t make a great show for future competitors who might try similar tactics.
I decided to watch the footage, they could have been a bit more subtle 
and pulled of a mighty coup without cheating, I’m with the players, the promoters created the the situation, the professional gamblers just took advantage of an opportunity. 