Poker Writer
Jesse Yaginuma thought he’d won his fourth career bracelet in the Millionaire Maker after he made a huge heads-up comeback against James Carroll late Wednesday night. However, the bracelet and the winnings are in jeopardy as the World Series of Poker announced this morning that it is investigating a potential breach of the rules.
The heads-up battle, which was broadcast live on the PokerGO stream, sparked bemusement from the commentary team and controversy among fans. It’s widely suspected that the two were engaged in a chip-dumping scheme, as Yaginuma stood to win an extra $1 million if he claimed the bracelet, thanks to a Club WPT Gold promotion.
Last night, we were made aware of a potential breach of the official WSOP Tournament Rules during heads up play in Event 53. An investigation is underway. At this time, 1st and 2nd place have not been confirmed and neither the prize money nor the bracelet have been officially…
— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) June 26, 2025
The Heads-Up Setting
Carroll and Yaginuma are both highly accomplished professionals with multiple millions in career winnings, and they found themselves heads up against each other after Josh Reichard was eliminated in third place.
At the start of heads-up play, Carroll held a massive 10:1 chip lead, making it look destined that he would win his first bracelet. But strangely, Yaginuma was never all-in for his tournament life despite being down as low as seven big blinds. Instead, he dodged at least one near-certain cooler before beginning to accumulate chips after Carroll repeatedly raised and folded before the flop.
Big heads-up comebacks are not particularly rare. However, they usually require the trailing player to survive multiple all-ins. That was not necessary for Yaginuma.
What seemed like a bit of an implosion by Carroll soon aroused suspicion as patterns began to emerge. Several key hands were noted by those watching the stream and investigators. By the end of the event, even the commentary team was starting to predict game actions before they happened.
Were Bet Sizes the Signal?
Current popular belief is that Carroll’s bet sizes were a signal to Yaginuma, with odd numbers indicating bluffs and even numbers indicating a genuine hand.
PokerScout has collected data from the broadcast to investigate that hypothesis.
Post-flop, Carroll made a total of 15 bets that were not all-in.
- 10 bets were an odd number (in millions): In all cases, Carroll had missed the board—his best hand being King high.
- 5 bets were an even number: In all cases, Carroll had made a hand, middle pair being the worst of these.
The odds of this happening by coincidence are extremely small. Given a 5-10 split between even and odd bets, the chances that the five even bets would coincide with the five strongest hands are 3000 to 1. That’s ignoring the chances that bets and paired/unpaired hands would both be split the same way.
Connecting with the board about one-third of the time is normal. It’s hard to calculate the chances that a typical player would have the same distribution of even and odd bets, because that’s highly dependent on player tendencies. However, if we assume even and odd would usually be equally likely, the chances of the distribution being exactly 10-5 one way or the other are about 5.5 to 1. So we might guesstimate the overall odds of this scenario playing out by chance at no better than 16,500 to 1.
Preflop, Carroll made 22 bets that were not all-in. Only two were for even amounts, and both were weak Aces. The other 20 were for odd amounts, and all were hands he could (and often did) fold to a re-raise—weak Kings at best.
Hands stronger than a small, suited Ace all resulted in an all-in by Carroll. That included AA, twice.
Suspicious Hands
Suspicions grew over the course of the broadcast. The first hand that really raised eyebrows was the 14th of heads-up play. In that hand, Yaginuma had just seven big blinds left behind after flopping top pair.
He held 7♠5♣ on a flop of7♦6♦6♥. Yet he folded that top pair to a bet of 3 million from Carroll, who turned out to have trip sixes with10♦6♠.
The commentators were shocked by the fold considering Yaginuma’s tiny stack at that point.
I don’t know how you fold to one bet with 7 big blinds behind. Unless you know what Carroll has.
Once the players’ stacks were closer to even, Carroll began raising preflop more often. About half of his opens saw a three-bet by Yaginuma, who often didn’t have a much stronger hand himself. Carroll folded to almost all of these re-raises, allowing Yaginuma to draw closer and closer.
Once Yaginuma had pulled nearly even, Carroll blasted off a 57 million chip river over-bet that he announced verbally. The announcers, by this point, had begun their speculation and predicted that the bluff was coming after Carroll completely missed the 10♣5♣J♠7♣Q♠ board with his 6♣3♦. Yaginuma called with second pair J♣8♠ to take a massive lead and leave Carroll with just over ten big blinds.
The tournament ended shortly thereafter, with the only all-in seen in heads-up play. Carroll, holding A♣10♣ called a shove from Yaginuma’s Q♠3♦, but Yaginuma turned a Queen to end it.
ClubWPT Extra Million Provided Possible Motivation
For many in the community, the final straw is that Yaginuma was eligible to win an extra $1 million as a ClubWPT Gold Rush Ticket holder if he won any of 11 designated summer majors. The Millionaire Maer was one of those. Carroll was not eligible for such a prize.
After Yaginuma made his comeback, many went on social media to speculate that the two players had arranged a deal for Carroll to throw the match so that Yaginuma could win the promotion.
Wtf am I watching in the milly maker?
If Yagimuna wins he wins an extra 1million from the golden pass
Carroll went from playing great to looking like he's chip dumping to Yaginuma
This is a wild watch pic.twitter.com/WxqNXtBTOw
— Rob Kuhn (@RobKuhn_) June 26, 2025
It is worth noting that in the Millionaire Maker, the difference between first place ($1,255,180) and second place ($1,012,320) is much smaller than most tournaments in order to produce the headlines of creating two millionaires in an event.
The reaction grew as more people looked into it late into the night. The WSOP X account deleted their initial posts about the winner and runner-up. Now, WSOP and WPT Gold have both announced that they are investigating the situation. If it is determined that there was a plan to collude and split the promotional money, both players could lose their winnings and be banned from future WSOP events.
PokerScout Managing Editor Alex Weldon contributed the statistical analysis for this piece.
