The Week at FTP: FTOPS VII - What Else?

Posted by Big Donkey | Filed under The Week at FTP

Besides being a little infatuated with acronyms, we love FTOPS because it makes our weekly roundup a piece of cake. God bless our ever-growing band of red-name Friends of Brothers of Cousins of Full Tilt Pros, but trying to keep up with the live tournament results of 50 Million (number may be exaggerated) poker players is a little testing. Give us FTOPS any day.

If we’ve learned anything from this FTOPS so far it’s that the majority of people prefer NL Hold ’em over HORSE, and that many of you seem to share our disdain for guarantees, seeing as almost all of them have been well and truly smashed. (Of course, there’s the small possibility that we lowered the guarantee bar just so we can high-five each other around the water cooler, and there’s not much we can say to that except we really love a good high five.)

The appropriately-named cashmaker81 outlasted 5,319 players to claim $183,526 in Event #1, which reached a prize pool of $1,063,800 – well over the 750k guarantee. It was a similar story in Event #2, the PLO Knockout tourney where prize pool reached $236K (vs. a $100K guarantee) and winner urbestm8 earned $52,052. A smaller (and we’d like to claim more refined) field of 623 players just squeezed past the $300k guarantee for Event #3 $500+$35 HORSE where WCJOKER won $72,236.

Prokurist won $53,460 playing Pot-Limit Hold ‘em in Event #4 where a field of 1,215 Europeans (because no-one else plays Pot-Limit) took the prize pool to $243,000, trampling the 100K guarantee. Then, 1,203 sadomasochists (uh, we mean, players) turned out for our first Limit Hold ’em event of the Series where Bedard took down $49,202 out of a $240,600 prize pool ($150K guaranteed).

The Europeans came out in force again for Event #6, the PLO 6-max tourney, where 774 players generated a prize pool of $387,000 ($250k guaranteed), and gaffel5 topped the field with an $83,205 payday. Special mention goes to third-place finisher buttsauce33, just because it takes a brave man to play under the moniker buttsauce33. It was back to NL Hold ’em for Event #7 where a field of 2,254 players sent the prize pool up to $663,500 (once again smashing the $400k guarantee, yawn), and Merovingian scored a six-figure payday by winning $121,719.

Sunday brought about the biggest FTOPS fields so far, with Event #8 becoming the first FTOPS event to lock out at 6,000 players. The $600,000 prize pool quadrupled the guarantee, and Sleepy_Hippo (who we believe to be the brother of Hungry Hungry Hippo) collected $114,612 in addition to the numerous knockout bounties he amassed along the way.

…And Along Came E-Dog

Heads Up Bracket

Our red pros have turned out in force throughout FTOPS VII, with many of them making respectable runs into the money throughout the series. In the first eight events, Scott Fischman posted a 12^th-place finish in Event #2, while Sigi Stockinger finished the same tournament in fifth. Later that day, Jens Voertmann also reached the final table, taking sixth in Event #3.

Not bad, if we do say so ourselves.

Then, Event #9 rolled around and Erick Lindgren, being the genial host he is, showed the new kids how you close out an FTOPS tourney by winning the biggest event we’ve had so far. Sure, it wasn’t as much as he made with his ridiculous golf prop bet last summer, but we don’t think Erick will scoff at the $291,748 he added to his bankroll.

There are still 11 FTOPS events to go, including the $2,500 Two-Day NL Event and the $2M Guaranteed Main Event. We’ll be watching all the action from the rail because, well, that’s what we do - especially since they don’t pay enough to play in these events ourselves. Hey Erick… about that loan…

In Other News

Someone told us that they’ve started this new thing where people leave their homes and travel to casinos to play live poker tournaments. We not sure we see the appeal here, but some of our pros certainly do.

Over the past week, Lee Watkinson has kept his hot-streak alive, taking seventh at the WSOPC tourney at the Rincon in San Diego. Fellow Tilter and prolific prop-bettor Gavin Smith took sixth in the same tourney. Meanwhile, up the road in Commerce (LA, for those of you not familiar with the geography of Southern California), Max Pescatori ung with the stars and won the $1K Limit Hold ‘em tourney at the LA Poker Classic.