Tournament players have quite the life these days. It seems every month there’s a series of major live tournaments taking place in some beautiful city around the world, or heading online and enjoying the many daily and weekly guarantees offered by poker sites. As if all this wasn’t enough, we’re right in the middle of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series, where everyone in the world can battle it out at Bovada for the glory and the crazy amounts of prize money. Event 26 concluded yesterday, and the winner LuCkyTDoGG was rewarded with $76,212.77.
The Full Tilt Online Poker Series, or FTOPS as it is more commonly known, has been going on for a few years now and is hosted on Full Tilt about every three months. Since the beginning the number of events has skyrocketed, as has the total guaranteed prize pool, and today we see a great variety of tournaments of different poker variants and formats, and of course even some of Full Tilt’s very own Rush Poker tournament. We’re in the middle of FTOPS XVIII, which is home to 34 events and a mind-bogglingly large total guaranteed prize pool of over $19,000,000.
Event 26 was a $200 + $16 Super Stack 6max tournament. Super Stack just means the players start off with much more than the usual amount of chips, and 6max of course means that there are never more than six players on any one table. Having less players on the table tends to create a more aggressive game, as the blinds come around a lot faster meaning it’s too expensive to simply sit and wait for premium hands. 2,726 entrants turned up to try their hand at this format, either by buying in directly or winning their ticket in a satellite tournament, and the $450,000 guarantee was easily exceeded with the prize pool sitting at $545,200.
Every FTOPS event is hosted by a Full Tilt Pro or some other poker celebrity who is associated with Full Tilt Poker in some way. The host of Event 26 was Matthew Jarvis, who is best known for his outstanding performance this year in the World Series of Poker Main Event, in which he battled his way into the November Nine. He was eventually eliminated in eighth place once the November Nine sat around the final table, but making it that far in the WSOP Main Event is a very impressive feat indeed. He was eliminated in 1596th place in this Event 26, while the Full Tilt Pro who lasted the longest was Caio Pimenta, who made it to 79th place before being eliminated for $746.43.
As the final table became three-handed, the players left at the table were LuCkyTDoGG, Wall131TCI-I and sizzlinbettas. The three decided on a three-way split of the prize pool, which would see Wall131TCI-I earn the biggest share of the money. However there’s more than just money on the line, and the players still had to play it out to one winner that the title and gold FTOPS jersey could be awarded, as well as a small portion of the prize pool reserved for first place even after the chop. Wall131TCI-I may have gotten the largest cash reward out of the tournament, but in the end it was LuCkyTDoGG who outlasted the competition to win the FTOPS title and jersey.
The official final table results are as follows:
1st: LuCkyTDoGG – $76,212.77*
2nd: Wall131TCI-l – $78,334.91*
3rd: sizzlinbetta – $67,872.11*
4th: Elephant – $35,710.60
5th: vidal14 – $25,351.80
6th: 1plus1eqauls3 – $16,901.20