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#279 – FTOPS Bulletin – Event #1 – Misery by Proxy
The first event of the sixth series of FTOPS ran on Wednesday, November 7. The event was $200 + $16 NLHE, 6-handed, and it had an ambitious guarantee of $750,000, a lot for a “specialty” event being held on a week night. 3,676 players entered so they missed the guarantee by about $15,000. That’s tiny in an event this size, though it’s one of the few times I remember an FTOPS event falling short of the guarantee.
When Uncle Tilty gets around to asking my opinion, I’ll tell him the event’s failure to meet the guarantee was caused by 3 factors: (1) starting with a specialty event in the middle of the week; (2) the relatively limited appeal of 6-handed satellites; and (3) my personal failure to sign up for the event in time.
If you don’t play the satellites, especially the SnG satellites, you don’t see how brisk that action is. As I write this on Saturday afternoon, there are 785 players in Sunday’s $300 + $22 NLHE. About 80% made it from satellites. Of course, most people wait until the last minute to put their cash down but the satellites are big. The $300 + $22 has the perfect financial structure for a one-table satellite: 9 players put up $105 + $9, 3 get through. In FTOPS V, I won 8 or 9 of those buy-ins and didn’t get near the top of the leader board for satellite wins.
In a 6-handed event, the SnG satellites are 6-handed. They could (and I think did) run $69 + $6 satellites where 2 players made it in. They got about 1,500 players through satellites. It’ll be interesting to see how that compares with the number who make it by satellite into Sunday’s event.
It’s a fact of life that players want to play NLHE and they want to play it at a full table. Full Tilt has to balance giving the majority what they want most along with what most players want SOME. I know it doesn’t make sense to have players win entry into a 6-handed event through a 9-handed satellite, or getting into a Razz event through an NLHE satellite, but we could use more flexibility. How about having a class of FTOPS satellites that are 9-player NLHE but are not tied to a particular event? I can see the flaw with having all FTOPS SnG satellites being NLHE or having all satellite winnings being transferable to any tournament or cash. But there should be some middle ground, offering all kinds of satellites and requiring players to enter when they win a satellite that’s specific to a particular event and maybe some number of events with their “general” satellite wins.
The REAL reason they didn’t make the guarantee in Event #1 was because I didn’t sign up. I was going to sign up at the last minute but events conspired against me. I had to pick up my daughter Ellie, who was supposed to be going to a movie with a friend at a mall near the school (that Ellie attends and at which Jo Anne teaches), instead went to a mall about 20 minutes further away. The trip back took much longer than expected – or maybe it just SEEMED to take forever – because we got into one of those fights that you can only understand if you have teenagers.
Ellie’s a wonderful daughter and it all got worked out, so I won’t labor over the details. But just to explain why I feel like I aged 10 years on that 35 mile drive, here are the essentials: (1) We had no problem with Ellie spending the day with a teenage boy, partly unsupervised, because this boy was way better than the teenage boys she’s wanted to spend time with; (2) She recruited this boy into the group with the boys who terrify us (and the school administration, which Jo Anne works for, though Ellie said, “It’s not a gang. It’s just a group of us who listen to Insane Clown Posse and are in trouble because a couple of the guys got into fights with the group – also not a gang – that sits on the wall next to the school.”) (3) She bought an Insane Clown Posse tee shirt, which she made a point of insisting that she wear to school the next day. At one point in the discussion, Ellie threatened to change schools, quit school, hide the tee shirt and wear it anyway, and leave home. I’m kind of surprised she didn’t threaten to jump out of the moving car.
We got home one minute before the tournament started. I tried to register but my computer froze up. By the time I rebooted, it was too late.
If I was in that tournament, even if I signed up just a minute before, there would have been a surge of entries. As it was, both Andy Bloch and Chris Ferguson expressed surprise when they found out I didn’t enter. I think this is like Lucy being surprised when Charlie Brown doesn’t want to take another run at kicking the football.
It wasn’t a good night for the Full Tilt pros. Out of 30 who entered, zero made it to the money. In fact, no Full Tilt pro made it within 200 of the money. When I saw Jon “PearlJammed” Turner was the last pro standing, I figured “we” were finally going to make a good run. The guy is Tournament Poker Rambo. But he busted 658th; 432 made the money.
