You’d have to be living under a rock this past week to not have realized that the Full Tilt Online Poker Series is well underway and drawing huge crowds of young poker hopefuls to compete on Full Tilt. This is, of course, the seventeenth FTOPS and the biggest so far with 34 events and a massive $19,000,000 in guaranteed prize pools. Event 22 is the first thus far to have had a $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool, and it kicked off yesterday evening.

This latest FTOPS tournament was a rebuy event, which allows players to be much more liberal and aggressive in the first hour of play. Any time that a player falls below a certain level of chips during the rebuy period, even if he loses all the chips in front of him, he is able to top up his chipstack and continue playing. As the rebuy period comes to a close, there is a brief break in which players are given the option of purchasing an add-on, which is usually the size of their starting stack. In these sorts of tournaments you tend to see a lot of big pots in the first hour when the consequences of getting stacked aren’t very harsh.

Only 913 players registered for the $300 + $22 tournament, whether outright or by winning any number of satellite tournaments, but each time a player rebuys or purchases an add-on it costs the same as entry into the tournament, minus the tournament fee. With 1,713 rebuys and 711 add-ons, the prizepool for Event 22 just snuck over its $1,000,000 guarantee and came to rest at the grand total of $1,001,100. The top 102 players got a piece of the action.

A cool thing about FTOPS is that each event has a host, usually a well-known poker player affiliated in some way with Full Tilt. Event 22 was hosted by Argentinean player Damian Salas, who has enjoyed multiple World Series of Poker cashes since discovering his passion for poker. The lawyer is a force to be reckoned with, and in addition to hosting the event he made his presence felt on the tables, too, during this tournament.

Event 22 was a 6-handed event, and as the final 30 players settled into their five tables, there were two red pros in their midst. One was 2010 November Nine member John Dolan, and the other was the host himself Damian Salas. Although they both put in a great effort to make it so far, sadly their luck ran out and shortly afterwards Dolan and Salas busted in 26th and 27th places respectively, for a touch over $4,500 each.

Sailing past them were KJulius10, BLUEberLEEZ and elanor, three players who went on to make the final table, outlast their competitors and eventually settle on a chop. While BLUEberLEEZ and elanor walked away with $147,000 each, KJulius10 scored $159,000 and the win. The young american player is no stranger to big success, having already netted over $1 Million in online poker winnings since starting playing, but this latest victory is nevertheless sure to have him riding the winner’s high for days to come!

Here are the official final table results:

KJulius10 – $158,243.21
BLUEberLEEZ – $147,826.47
elanor – $146,929.17
Bourbonftw – $76,083.60
Maxine Waters – $54,059.40
Aneris – $34,537.95