[Masquerade]

It's not that good. The formula used to determine winning probability from chip count seems overly simplistic and doesnt reward big stacks enough. There are also many intangibles at the poker table ... Habib knows Tuan Le's style well ... he knows he "ought" to call with KJs but some little glint in Tuan's eye or subconscious trigger he's not even aware of tells him he's calling on a 3-outer. Who knows? You can't apply "math guy" rules to intuitive players.

There's also the more basic fact that keeping Tuan Le down at 2.7 by folding is much better than letting him get up to 4.3 with a double when he's a live force again. I would assume Habib is confident he has an edge against Maxfield simply due to experience, so is happy to let him take the risk of eliminating Tuan Le and not be so concerned if Maxfield moves ahead as a result.

I would assume Paul Phillips privately believes there was some soft-playing going on, or he wouldnt make such a fuss about it. But I believe he has made deals at the final table before and I can see no moral distinction between deal-making and players owning percentages of eachother. Both reduce variance.