Uhh … wow.
That's pretty much all you can say, at first, about the success of the fourth event in the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) IV, a $1,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em event. The event replaced the normally scheduled $1K Monday event on Full Tilt and, in essence, it was that exact tournament with an FTOPS slapped on it. My, what a difference that FTOPS made.
Normally, that tournament would draw 100-200 entrants and thus build a prize pool of around $100,000-$200,000. The folks at Full Tilt decided to give its FTOPS replacement what they thought was an ambitious $300,000 guarantee. As it turns out, they were a little off. The event lured 908 entrants, to generate a prize pool of $908,000 and offer a first-place prize of $208,840 (which rivals even the PokerStars Sunday Million behemoth's top prize). With a prize pool 300 percent larger than the posted guarantee, it's safe to say that Full Tilt underestimated the power of a big-buy-in online tournament.
And, of course, the large buy-in (for an online tournament) brought out the pros. Team Full Tilt member Erick Lindgren went deep in the tournament before busting out in 14th place, which earned him $6,356. Other notable players who made money finishes included (among many): lordhutty (10th, $8,626), Kyle "kwob20" Bowker (11th, $8,626), Jon "PearlJammed" Turner (21st, $3,541), and Cory "UGOTPZD" Carroll (23rd, $3,541).
CalBandGreat went on to win the tournament after winning the heads-up match against cheesemonster. He earned himself the $208,840 top prize and an exclusive gold FTOPS jersey avatar for his finish. CalBandGreat is also notable for having made the final tables of both the PokerStars Sunday Million and the Sunday Warmup in April of this year.
The final results were:
1) CalBandGreat – $208,840
2) cheesemonster – $131,660
3) DF_Newbie – $97,610
4) Lutteur – $74,910
5) agent007 – $56,750
6) PlzWarnMe – $40,860
7) eatschips – $27,240
8) SteadyCash – $21,247.20
9) caressmedown – $15,436
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