The Full Tilt Online Poker Series came to a close today, after running for nearly two weeks. It’s been a great series with a huge amount of money won, and there will be many tournament players now looking forward to a well-deserved break. This FTOPS XVII offered a staggering guaranteed prize pool of $19,000,000 spread over 34 events, including the $3,000,000 guarantee Main Event which finished this morning bringing the series to its conclusion.

The Main Event is, a the name suggests, the largest and most prestigious tournament in the series, boasting the largest guaranteed prize pool. The event is a Super Stack tournament, which is Full Tilt parlance meaning players start off with very large chip stacks relative to the blinds. It’s generally considered in poker that the deeper the stacks the more skill edge is prevalent as there’s more room to play, so the Main Event was definitely not to be decided by a few mere coin flips.

Good deep poker and an almost ludicrously large guarantee of $3,000,000 drew a sizable crowd of 4,805 to the event. There have been satellites running throughout the entire series giving players the chance to have a stab at the big money for almost no cost, or participants could buy straight in for $600 + $40. The prize pool in the end stayed at its guarantee of $3,000,000 as registration fell 196 players short of the number needed to best the guarantee. The top 720 places ended up getting paid with first place promised an awesome $513,000.

The host for the Main Event of this series barely needs an introduction at all. Mike “The Mouth” Matusow is one of the most well-known professionals in the poker world, with three World Series of Poker Bracelets, a Tournament of Champions title and numerous appearances on poker television shows. Always a fun personality to have on the table, Mike Matusow livens things up with his chat and was a great choice to host this event. Unfortunately despite strong play he was eliminated in 767th place just short of the money.

Joao Barbosa, a young Portuguese red pro, made a much better run in the tournament. After playing through almost the entire field and making it to the final three tables, he was eliminated in 27th place. He walks away with $8,100 for his trouble. Not a figure to be laughed at, but Barbosa has had six figure scores in tournaments in the past, including a first in a European Poker Tour Polish Open event, so he was no doubt hoping for a deeper run.

In the end it was TyboVegas who reigned supreme and walked away with the jersey. Despite cries for a chop with as many as eight players still in the tournament, play continued until the third-place getter flagal43 was eliminated. At that point runner-up DQnk and TyboVegas agreed to a chop with DQnk receiving more money but leaving $30,000 and the jersey still to play for.

TyboVegas would go on to dominate the Heads-Up play walking away with $423,057.41 which, despite still being $23,000 less than DQnk received, is still a very respectable first-place cash, especially when combined with the FTOPS jersey.

While it’s very clear that TyboVegas has had a great series, there can also be no arguments that this has been a great FTOPS all round. The trend of more events and bigger prize pools is almost sure to continue with the next series, so if you feel you missed out then keep your eyes and ears open over the next few months. If you’re feeling hard done by because the events are so expensive, then the Mini FTOPS XVII is for you, kicking off on September 8. We hope you’ve enjoyed FTOPS XVII as much as we have, and we’ll see you at the next one!

Here are the official final table results:

TyboVegas – $423,057.41
DQnk – $446,942.59
flagal43 – $255,000
roo7227 – $192,000
Ship_the_dollar – $143,850
jfiiue4 – $99,000
einstein007 – $64,500
angrywhale – $45,000
JBurleson – $31,500