[edited to fix title]

Is the guy a HU specialist, or did he want to play HU just to avoid the chance of collusion?

He kind of became a HU specialist for those reasons. As far as I know the guy ONLY plays HU, and he's not too bad at it either. Put in hundreds of hours against the best players in the world for stakes that 1BB = 6 times what the average person makes in a year, you pretty much can't help but becoming a WC player. By the way, if you haven't read it, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It's not some masterful work of literature or anything, but its a fun read.

He is a sucker and I think they screwed him. I would expect it.

The book is a must read IMO, and it answers all the questions above.

He's a heads up specialist, and wanted to play huge stakes to put more pressure on the pros. He knew they had an edge of course, and the stakes were one way of him trying to gain some of that edge back.

Beal is down overall to the 'corporation', but not by all that much considering the number of hands and how many BBs we're talking about. He schooled quite a few of the top players as well, including Greenstein, Hansen, Giang, and Chan. Lederer, Harman and Brunson (Todd) all did the best against him if I remember correctly. He is definitely not a sucker, by any stretch of the imagination.

best coverage i could find so far:

Great find Kuso. Apparently, beal is holding his own (and a little more).

seems like beal lost 3 million... 30 bbs at the 50k/100k game they played (not 100k/200k as the article reported).

beal lamely claimed three of five winning days. yawn.

as he lost, i imagine he'll be back. that being said, i think a few of the corp (esp forrest) have beal's number.