So after a long Sunday of running into AA over and over in the big Bovadas I decided to run one of the 50+5 satellites into the Black Diamond Poker Open Main Event. For those that don't know, the Black Diamond Poker Open is Bovada's big poker series they are running in March. The first half of the events are tailored for the smaller bankroll players and the second half of the series has larger buyins. You can find information about this series at the following website http://poker.bovada.lv/poker-promotions/black-diamond-poker-open . So the main event runs April 1 at 5pm with a guaranteed $250,000 prize pool and a buy-in of $450.

Anyways, there were 21 players and the top 3 got paid (tickets for 1st and 2nd and $150 in cash for 3rd). Long story short, I run pretty well and easily make the top three with the chip lead. I have 12k, second place has 11k and third has 2.5k.

THEN THE STORY STARTS....2nd place guy with 11k starts talking in all caps in the chat log saying he will give away all his chips because the wants the $150 in cash instead of the $450 tourney buy-in. I immediately call him an idiot for openly colluding in the chat log. He calls me stupid and I decide to stay out of it. He tells the third place stack (2.5k) that he will raise most of the third place stacks chips and then will fold to a minor re-raise. I fold every hand while the short stack quickly re-raises the big stack over and over until he is out. Another weird part is that the small stack really did have good hands (AA, AQ, KQ) all in the 6 hands it took for the small stack to knock out the big stack.

So it made no difference for me because I still got my $450 tourney ticket for the BDPO Main Event but I have never seen someone turn down $450 in a tourney ticket for only $100 profit (the buy-in was $55).
Thoughts?