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This all came to my attention one day when I was looking at charts. Out of curiosity I looked up the WPT stock chart and saw a very interesting pattern.

http://tinyurl.com/8yscc

I got very curious about the sudden run up on HUGE volume and then the subsequent decline. I got to thinking about it and did some research about when Doyle made his announcement. Well, it was no coincidence that the exact top of that chart is when Doyle made his buyout offer.

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You're misinterpreting the chart. (I'm neither here nor there on the actual question, but thought I'd throw in a little trading info. . .)

There was no run-up in this stock. This was what's called a spike, or gapping up. Either overnight, or during a break in trading (when trading was temporarily frozen because of news being clarified), a lot of people put in orders to purchase. When trading re-opened, there were so many bids to buy at market that the running price gapped up, and that termendous volume hit all at once. Looking at the chart you provided, after the gap up on the news, the stock dove in massive trading. It's a little easier to see on the 6-month chart right now: http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickch...eq=1&time=7
There it's easier to see that the stock gapped up overnight, as speculator digested the news, and the volume hit after.

Other general info:

Stock movements like what happened at the beginning of July are common on rumors or news. It's standard fare any time there's a rumor or news powerful enough to cause the floor to halt trading on a stock pending clarification. Investors who had built up positions in the stock in prior months at 10-20 would naturally take profits on such a spike, many of them from automated sell order pre-entered into computers. Other investors, who play stocks based on news, would be putting in buys like mad in speculation that the offer will go through, and drive the price up to $36. The speculators drove the price up, the rational market drove the price down. The result is huge volume.

Secondly, the impact of these Shenanigans was not $36 to $6, as some hav been saying. The news spiked the stock into the 25-30 range. After clarification, it fell to the 20-23 range, where it traded for several weeks after. The subsequent plummeting to $6 had nothing to do with the incident; it was a gradual correction probably having to do with the company's misfortunes.

Thirdly, buyout offers like this are generally made at generous premiums to value. Thinly traded stocks are not very liquid, so a spike is always expected, and a company with no hard assets is always difficult to appraise. If this were a manufacturing firm, it would be easy to set a hard value, and the premium would not be likely to be so out of line with assets, but this is a service firm with an unknown market future. Like internet stocks before the market understood the net, the potential for profit was huge, so a big premium to capture the company is not unusual.

It would be easy to conceive the following scenario;

1. Big investor sees the size of the WSOP crowd and decides to make a move.
2. Investor contacts Brunson to particpate as the face of the the offer.
3. Hasty decision are made in hopes of taking advantage of WSOP publicity.
4. The lawyers decide this hasty nonsense is unacceptable and a probably risk with the SEC, and pull out.
5. Buyer has remorse as his advisors point out the underlying company's weakness. Poker may be a sure thing, but the WPT doesn't look so hot as a company.
6. Bidders back down; chaos ensues.

I'm not saying that's what happened; I'm saying it's possible. It's equally possible that the big bidder accumulated a big position during June at prices of 18-23, and when the stock drooped to 17 in early July, they conspired to spike the stock so that they could unload without taking a big hit.

The investigation will likely tell; the question is what big investors acquired a lot BEFORE the spike and unloaded AFTER. If no related individuals made big profits (other than professional speculators who day-trade stocks like this all the time), then it's likely that there is no real conspiracy.