The finale of the eleventh Full Tilt Online Poker Series was held on Sunday. The $535 buy-in Main Event trumped its $2.5 million guarantee, attracting 5,287 entrants, who created a prize pool of over $2.6 million. At the end of the day, its big winner and new FTOPS Main Event Champion was Adam csimmsux Geyer, who took home $456,000. A total of 738 players, or 14% of the field, finished in the money and the top seven players banked over $50,000. The FTOPS XI Main Event drew a similar sized field to that of FTOPS X. In total, it was one of the most successful FTOPS ever held.
The $535 buy-in tournament was the finale of the 25 event series that began back on February 4th. The Main Event had a bevy of satellites and featured a veritable “who’s who” of the online poker world. Besides csimmsux, other Full Tilt Poker players who made the final table were KA1SERfknS0ZE (second place for $276,246), PartyPimp (third place for $177,643), clubflush5 (fourth place for $138,784), CHOOK2120 (fifth place for $104,418), dump22 (sixth place for $77,983), 23bigd23 (seventh place for $60,801), supermanpunch (eighth place for $46,261), and Luie Sojo (ninth place for $34,366).
Geyer finished eighth in a $5,000 buy-in World Series of Poker (WSOP) event last year for $94,000. The tournament was ultimately won by Scott Seiver. Geyer also took 485th in the 2006 WSOP Main Event. That tournament, which boasted the largest field in WSOP history, was won by Jamie Gold, who recently signed with the Merge Gaming Network room ACED Poker. The FTOPS Main Event was hosted by 2008 WSOP Europe Main Event Champion John Juanda. That event is currently airing on ESPN, so check your local listings for more details.
Also wrapping up on Sunday was the heralded $5,200 buy-in Two-Day Event, which has become a staple of the FTOPS. The tournament attracted an even 500 players, each of whom either coughed up the entry fee or won a satellite on the world’s second largest online poker room. Taking home the title was fyrtuk, who banked a colossal $625,000, the largest prize handed out during FTOPS XI. Heads-up, he defeated Ultimate Bet Star Player Adam “Roothlus” Levy, who also has a fifth place finish in the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Festa al Lago tournament under his belt. The winner of that event, which was held during Season VII of the WPT, was Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, a member of Team PokerStars Pro.
Others who turned $5,200 into a substantial amount of cash during the Two-Day Event were the best woman (third place for $281,250), Wu_Wizard (fourth place for $218,750), utreg (fifth place for $162,500), donivan31 (sixth place for $118,750), holla-athca-boy (seventh place for $77,500), Egarim (eighth place for $62,500), and gboro780 (ninth place for $48,750). If the latter name looks familiar to you, it’s because Steve “gboro780” Gross took home the gold jersey in Event 10 of FTOPS XI for $275,000. Gross is one of the top online poker players on the planet and continues to post impressive results on poker’s biggest stage.
The weekend also saw the largest tournament in FTOPS history take place. A whopping 9,061 players turned out for a $129 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Knockout tournament. During FTOPS X, this event generated a field of 7,000 players. Of each player’s $129 buy-in, $100 went to the prize pool, $9 went to PokerStars as a rake, and the remaining $20 was placed on each person’s head as a bounty. This meant over $180,000 in bounties were available in addition to the $906,000 prize pool. When the smoke cleared in the tournament, girlyhurly took home the title for $144,885. Finishing as the runner up was AAs to QQs, who recorded a $90,610 consolation prize. Taking third was Doglamina, who earned $54,366.
The FTOPS typically runs quarterly, meaning we’d expect to see another tournament series kick off in April, just before the start of the 40th annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Congratulations from all of us here at MacPoker.com to the winners of FTOPS XI tournaments.
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