Firstly, vul steve and a terrible way to finish 2nd
Secondly, lets not be too harsh on the winner and his supposed lack of morals.
If he was an 888 reg who had never played APAT events before, he may not understand the prestige associated with such events.
There is no emotional attachment to Online poker and with such a difference in first and second prizes, there should be no obligation to "do the right thing" when a player gets disconnected.
FWIW, I"d have sat out in this spot (for as long as it would take), but then Steve is a mate and I"ve played APAT events before, so know a lot of the players and understand the ethos that goes with these games and know that most members would do the same thing. If it was some random event, then I"d have probably given the guy 5-10 mins depending on the structure then raised for England.
As far as I can tell this is the only time anybody has mentioned the impact of the structure with regards to stealing blinds off a disconnect.
If you disconnect with a 2:1 chip lead, then reconnect and have a 1:2 chip deficit, it can signify a vastly different approach by your opponent depending on just how many blinds those ratio"s represent. If the average stack was only about 5 blinds when you disconnected they haven"t really done much to turn that around, for example.
The whole idea of giving someone a specific amount of time to reconnect isn"t right imo, if you give someone 10 minutes to reconnect when the blinds are half an hour - that"s a very different proposition to giving them 10 minutes when the blind levels are 10 minutes long.
Thinking about the question of whether the win is deserved by taking your opponents chips when they"re disconnected. You obviously haven"t outplayed them by taking their chips like this - but if you wait for them to reconnect and the blinds going up means the average stack is down to 10 blinds for example, has the winner really played better to win? It"s much more realistic to suggest that at that stage the winner is more down to who is lucky enough to get good cards and for them to hold up in a pre-flop all in confrontation.
Generally speaking I"d give half a blind level for someone to reconnect - but the lower the average stack, the less time I"d give them, because it would be irrational not to do so.