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#229 – FTOPS Hangover
I always feel a little awkward after an FTOPS series ends, an online equivalent of the feeling at the end of the World Series of Poker. For eleven days, I built by afternoons and evening around the FTOPS, playing, writing, analyzing. As soon as it ended, I instant-messaged Disco Stu, my favorite tournament director, and asked, “What’s next?” (Aussie Millions satellites, he told me.)
This FTOPS, like the ones before it, ended in failure for me. I played 9 events. My buy-ins totaled $3,356. I cashed 1 time for $435. I played poorly in two events, the opening event and the $1,000 + $60 six-handed, and felt like I wasted my money. But I played extremely well a lot of other times, outperforming (I felt) my financial results. In the PLHE where I cashed, I built a big stack, lost over 90% of it 100 spaces from the money with K-K v. A-A, and successfully rebuilt. If I had lasted one more hand, I’d have made at least $100 more. And if my A-J had hit against 5-5, I’m confident I could have made much more. I twice busted out of tournaments when I got most or all my chips in with a set and my opponent made an unexpected inside straight. Once was early in the $300 + $22 NLHE event, but the other was after more than 3 ½ hours in the Main Event. I was short-stacked for most of the first three hours in that one, built a significant stack, and lost it all when my opponent hit a fluky runner-runner inside straight. I paid off at the end, because I put my opponent on A-K and thought the king on the river made him top pair. Instead, he had A-Q and the jack-king turn-river combination made a straight after a ten-high flop. That player vaulted into the top 30 in chips with 1,000 players to go based on that. Maybe I’d have still busted short of the money, or made an inconsequential low-money finish, but that’s the difference between failure and degrees of success in tournaments.
By the numbers, my buy-ins totaled $3,356 and my cash was for $435, for a negative $2,924. That’s actually BETTER than my final result in FTOPS III or FTOPS IV. I actually didn’t do nearly that bad financially, as I won satellites into 4 of the 9 events I played (winning a freeroll into the Main Event), and winning another 11 satellite entries – a total of 9 in the $300 + $22 NLHE, which put me on the leaderboard of the Satellite Challenge for that event – which translated into cash.
For the other Full Tilt pros, the balance was not significantly altered from what I wrote in entry #227.
Pros: 54
Entries: 257
Cashes: 32
Total buy-ins: $179,542 (Note: as I said in #227, I don’t know the actual numbers for the rebuy events, so I used an estimate of 3.5 times the buy-in plus the juice for each pro. Obviously, the true number could have been more or less, though I think it’s a reasonable overall estimate.)
Total cashes: $83,572
Balance for all Full Tilt pros collectively: Negative $95,970
Cash positive: 9 pros
Cash negative: 45 pros
MVP: J.J. Liu, who finished 10th in the $1,000 + $60 NLHE 6-handed event, for $18,589. It was her only cash of the FTOPS though she exceeded her estimated buy-ins by more than $12,000.
Iron man: Max Pascatori, the only pro to play every event in this series of FTOPS. Despite the pros mostly losing money and Max playing more than any other pro, he cashed 3 times (though not in the event he hosted) and finished positive by more than $5,000. In fact, only J.J. Liu cashed for more or had a bigger positive overall result.
Chris Ferguson Award: Chris Ferguson, who played just one event, cashing for $815 against a buy-in of $216. Although I was unable for the purposes of these numbers to include actual rebuy or satellite numbers, which would affect a particular pro’s positive/negative result, I know that Chris won his way into the event through 2 satellites and his actual cost was $7.70. He never stops astounding me.
End of the Hosting Curse: 3 pros (John D’Agostino, Robert Mizrachi, and Keith Sexton) cashed in the events they hosted, breaking a long streak of hosting pros busting out early.
So what can we conclude from all this? First, tournament poker on Full Tilt is hard. Many of these 54 pros are among the most successful live tournament players around. In fact, their total ratio of cashes per entries (32 cashes out of 257 entries) shows a general ability to translate live tournament poker skill into the online format.
Second, you need to win (or come very close) to make money at tournament poker. I explained this in #227 and it remains true. The best we could do overall was 10th by J.J. Liu and Eddie Scharf, and 4th by Max Pescatori.
Third, “online poker” is different from “poker.” Everyone knows that, but the business of adapting is bigger and takes longer, probably, than most pros imagined. The tournaments are now big enough that it’s not a matter that it’s not worth their while. (I say “their”, referring to players whose tournament successes, unlike mine, have been so large as to have previously made online tournament poker’s rewards seem relatively small.) I think when more of the pros play more $150+ online tournaments, they’ll adapt. Already, more pros are playing FTOPS than ever before and I think more pros are playing the Sunday tournaments and the Monday night $1,000 + $60 event.
On the other hand, if J.J. Liu had finished third instead of tenth in the $1,000 + $60 NLHE last week, we’d be in the black.
P.S. – I really don’t think Crazy Zachary, who won the FTOPS Main Event, is Barry Greenstein, as seems to be the common rumor. In a tournament right after Full Tilt instituted the time bank, Crazy Zachary busted me out by calling my all-in bet with pocket kings, but only after exhausting his time bank. Because I was short stacked and he had a lot of chips, it was absolutely not a decision that needed ANY time, much less the whole minute of the time bank. I don’t think any professional would do that, especially not someone of Barry’s stature and comportment. Crazy Zachary later sought to offer a variety of excuses – disconnected, someone else was using the account, stepped away from the computer etc. – but even if that any of them were true, Barry knows how to reach me and I’d assume would personally contact me. I just can’t imagine the real Barry Greenstein would want me thinking he pulled such an obvous slowroll.
