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Contrary to most people, I was on Gold’s side in that $6M WSOP controversy.

Sure, Gold had promised half his winnings to a friend in exchange for assistance in recruiting players who would dress up in Bodog T-shirts during the WSOP Main Event.

And agreements should be kept, I’m not arguing with that. Pacta sunt servanda and all that.

But what happened in Vegas that summer – Gold’s $12 million win – was so out of the ordinary that none of the parts could possibly have foreseen it.

As a consequence, it’s fair to say that the event wasn’t covered by the agreement. Unless you’re advocating a rigid policy of always taking people’s exact words literally. That’s not how language works. There’s always a context.

It was a verbal agreement. Those are valid of course, but the room for interpretation is typically quite large when two people agree on something, often in the spur of the moment.

Had they put their agreement down in writing, it’s very possible that Gold would have introduced a ceiling, by saying something like “Leyser will get half my winnings, limited to a maximum of $50,000″ or so.

Leyser certainly had no legit expectations of earning himself six million dollars for whatever work he may have done. When Gold won his extraordinary prize, their verbal agreement clearly wasn’t specific enough to cover this unexpected outlier.

I’d say Gold did the right thing when he refused to give away six million dollars. Instead he sat down with Leyser to look over the specifics of the agreement and find common ground. Which apparently they did.

On the other hand, if it’s true that Gold confirmed the agreement over the phone shortly before the final table started, then I take back all what I’ve said here.

Then gold should have paid up.