Mike Leah winning the WPT Fallsview Poker Classic would not be suspicious by itself, but the way he beat Ryan Yu in the heads-up raises some questions.
Mike Leah is an accomplished professional, with almost $7 million in live tournament earnings, so it’s no surprise to see him winning a tournament. That’s exactly what he did in the WPT Fallsview Main Event, where he outlasted a field of 517, to take down the title and the $359,342 coming with it.
The 6-handed final table started with Carlos Chadha holding the chip lead, overseeing 97 big blinds. However, it was Leah and Yu, who made it to the last two after the elimination of Joe Ferrier (6th; $75,843), Daniel Wagner (5th; $99,477), Carlos Chadha (4th; $131,911) and Tim Rutherford (3rd; $176,824).
The two started the duel with Yu having a commanding chip lead with his 90-big blind stack against the 39 big blinds of Leah’s. We’ve seen players turning things around and managing to win tournaments coming from behind. But the way Leah did this is rather questionable. At WPT events it’s not allowed to make deals, players have to play according to the original pay-outs structure. But off-the-table deals are hard to unveil and many people suggest that the last two remaining players did exactly this.
They took a short – unplanned – break before starting the duel. There were several uncanny plays from Yu’s part after this, such as the followings:
– in a hand, Yu raised to 4,000,000 and folded to a shove of 4,695,000 by Leah
– the next hand Leah limped in, Yu made it 5,000,000 to go and folded to a re-raise all-in of 8,715,000
– in another hand, he opened to 1,700,000 and mucked his hands when Mike moved in for only 40,000 more
Although these plays are of course not against the rules, those who have some clue about the game know exactly how impossible it is for a competent player to make them. There is no point in folding any two cards before the flop when you’re getting odds of around 100-to-1. Even if you have 7-2 offsuit which is one of the worst starting hands in poker and you know for a fact that your opponent is holding pocket aces (the best hand in poker FYI) the correct play is to call because you have a more than 12% chance to win.
Every player who ever played the game seriously, knows this exactly and that’s why speculations about a possible collusion started to fly around in the poker community. There are many people who think that Mike offered the first prize money to his opponent in exchange for the title and the $15,000 seat into the WPT Tournament of Champions coming with it.
Since this would be against the rules of WPT’s, it’s yet to be seen if the organizers are going to do an investigation on the issue.
Final results
1st: Mike Leah $359,342*
2nd: Ryan Yu $239,564
3rd: Tim Rutherford $176,824
4th: Carlos Chadha $131,911
5th: Daniel Wagner $99,477
6th: Joe Ferrier $75,843
Did the two collide or is Yu really this bad of a poker player? Let us know what you think in the comments!
