Last tournament of the season ends up in a 3 way split

Posted by pokerguru on May 22, 2009

The season did not end up the way you would think as three amateurs split the final pot of the season and let one man walk away with the title with nothing more than a handshake. Jean Gaspard will be going to the WSOP, but you have to think the other two players will be kicking themselves for years to come for not sticking it out and seeing who really would have won.

The final World Series Circuit Tour Event of the season had a mere 167 players to get through and Billy Kopp had made short work of them all for the last two days of the tournament. He had gradually built up his stack to a point that he was assured of being a force and to think that he would just hand the championship away is almost criminal.

The way the whole tournament went down screams of rule changes. If this is truly a vehicle of the WSOP, splits should not be allowed. Add to the fact that one player was allowed to walk with the championship without actually having to win it and you just have to shake your head. Even if they agree to split, there had to be some kind of rule that they should have to keep a certain portion of the money set to the side and play until there is one winner.

What was going through the other two players minds that had them walk away from the table with $50,000 less and just flat out giving up a chance to play in the WSOP for free? You can almost understand why Christopher went for the chop as he was only sitting with under 500,000 while the other two were over 1,000,000 in chips. However, Kopp should be absolutely ashamed at walking away from this split when he had about 2/3 the amount of the chips as the leader. When you break down the cash, the split is hardly reasonable considering the difference from second to third.

Players wait their whole lives for this opportunity and to hand a tournament of this caliber to someone is absolutely ridiculous. This rule needs to be changed or the series will be regarded as a complete joke. You cannot even split a tournament on Poker Stars without playing to the end and putting a certain amount aside for the winner. How you can you justify allowing this to happen in a WSOP Circuit Tour Event?