FTOPS XII continued yesterday with Event #4. This was a $200 + $16 no-limit Hold’em event allowing 1-re-buy and 1-add-on and featuring a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool. That prize would rise, however, as there were 1,196 players to buy-in, followed by 872 re-buys and 784 add-ons. That brought the total in the pot to $580,400!
As with most of the FTOPS tournaments, there were a number of Full Tilt’s Red Pros in this one. Red Pros in this event included Andrew Black, David Pham, Lee Watkinson, and Scott Fischman. Only two of Full Tilt’s Pros would finish in the money, however. Stefan Rapp finished at 110th place and tournament host, Trond Eidsvig, lasted until 36th place, taking in $1,741.20 for the effort.
Of course we all know that the final table is where the real money is at, so let’s take a look.
Going out in 9th place was miAmihAns, winning $8,706. In 8th was Mammola, taking down $12,188.40. 7th place went to achen for $16,831.60 and in 6th place and winning $26,118 was ITrashYou.
The battle of the final five was fast and furious, going from five to one in a matter of about 30 minutes. Alain456 was by far the short stack, with $193,689 in chips. Tuff_fish was next at $823,720 and Dudeoflife followed with $1,343,671. The top two were quite close, as tuna_fish_tank had $1,834,301 and Leopard18 had $1,943,619.
Alain456 got out of the way very quickly, as he had very little to work with, taking in $35,578.52 for his 5th place finish. Dudeoflife was the next to go out when he decided to play his A6 of hearts very aggressively from the button. He opened and was 3-bet by tuna_fish_tank from the small blind. He decided to shove his stack of over a million in chips and was immediately called by tuna_fish_tank. Dudeoflife saw the bad news as tank turned over AA, which held. Dudeoflife took down a very nice $47,157.50 for fourth place.
The play continued to be very aggressive and the final hand for tuff_fish was no exception. He held AT of hearts, opened on the button and was called by Leopard18 from the big blind. The flop was 644 rainbow and Leopard18 check-raised the bet by tuff_fish. The turn was another 4 and both players checked. A 3 came on the river and Leopard18 led out for $136,000 into a pot of over $500,000. Tuff_fish saw this as an opportunity and shoved for his remaining stack of a little over $1 million chips. Leopard18 called and turned over 56 for a full boat, knocking tuff_fish out in third place (winning $58,765.50).
The heads-up battle started with Leopard18 holding a chip-lead of $3.8 million to tuna_fish_tank’s $2.3 million. However, the battle would last less than 10 minutes as Leopard18 just kept chipping away at tank’s stack and in the process taking a commanding lead of nearly 3-to-1. The final hand went like this:
Tuna_fish_tank limps A4of spades on the button, and calls Leopard18’s raise. They see a flop of 96A (two clubs) and tuna calls Leopard’s lead of $102,000. The turn brings the Ten of diamonds and once again Leopard leads, $306k into a pot of $492k. Tuna_fish decides to raise all-in for just over $1.4 million in chips. He gets the bad news when Leopard18 calls and turns over A9 for two pair and tuna_fish_tank is drawing dead (3 outs for a split pot).
It’s not all bad, though, as tuna_fish_tank took down a prize of $81,256 for his second place finish. Leopard18 won $127,688 for 1st place, as well as the title of FTOPS XII Event 4 Champion!