Originally <a href='http://www.sportsbookreview.com/forum/showthread.php?p=23573933'>posted</a> on 02/12/2015:
The big problem I have with awarding it to the highest total points scorer is the possibility of cheating - imagine two people are very close near the end competing for 1st, and one person convinces other people to dump to him in a few tourneys (or puts a ghost in to dump to him for a few tourneys), etc. etc. When the award for 1st is a $10,000 seat in the Main Event, and second is peanuts by comparison, too likely something like that could happen (or someone could start cheating from the beginning in these ways even). Making it a grand finale where all players start on equal footing does at least mostly stop the motivation for trying to cheat like that. Not to say I think it's optimal, but I can certainly see how the other format might cause big problems itself in that regard.
The big problem I have with awarding it to the highest total points scorer is the possibility of cheating - imagine two people are very close near the end competing for 1st, and one person convinces other people to dump to him in a few tourneys (or puts a ghost in to dump to him for a few tourneys), etc. etc. When the award for 1st is a $10,000 seat in the Main Event, and second is peanuts by comparison, too likely something like that could happen (or someone could start cheating from the beginning in these ways even). Making it a grand finale where all players start on equal footing does at least mostly stop the motivation for trying to cheat like that. Not to say I think it's optimal, but I can certainly see how the other format might cause big problems itself in that regard.