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#401 – FTOPS VIII Begins in a Familiar Way
On Wednesday, Full Tilt held the first event of FTOPS VIII. Despite my vows that this Series would be different from my lame efforts in FTOPS VII (and FTOPS VI, FTOPS V, etc.), the whole experience felt like deja vu.
I didn’t sign up early for the first event because, for some reason I can’t figure out, I have gone from excellent to awful at 6-handed NLHE tournament play. At one point – this is now more than a year ago – I made 5 final tables in a month in Full Tilt’s largest nightly 6-handed tournament. Since then, I’ve played that same tournament about 40 times without making it past the first break. And my two worst events at last year’s WSOP were 6-handed NLHE.
But I took it on myself to enter this first event anyway, event though it was $200 + $16 NLHE 6-handed. With traffic down a little recently from payment processor issues, I thought I’d show up for the good of the team.
When I signed up 45 minutes before the start, I noticed they were running “Super Turbo Satellites.” These must be the sickest invention ever dreamed up by Full Tilt’s tournament staff. They run these in the hour before big tournaments. These are for people for whom a microwave isn’t fast enough. They are turbos, starting at limits of 15-30, but players start with only ONE HUNDRED chips.
I was supposed to go by the bank and pick up food for dinner before the tournament but I figured there was no harm in playing one or two.
I busted out of the first two I played in a total of two hands. A half hour later, I had played 18 of these $70 + $4 Super Turbo Satellites. The crazy thing is that I made it through 6 of them, so for all that activity I broke even. I wanted to play some more but they cut them off 15 minutes before the event. By then, however, there was no time for banking or the grocery store.
I was pleased to see that Full Tilt didn’t need my efforts to boost attendance to make the guarantee. (I stayed registered anyway.) The guarantee was $750,000, or 3,750 players, and registration sailed by that number in 9 1/2 minutes to go.
Eventually, 4,158 players signed up, creating a prize pool exceeding $830,000. It was eventually won by the guru 11, who took down more than $158,000 in the 9 hour, 19 minute event. In celebrations today, guru probably isn’t reflecting on this anywhere near as much as me (or at all), but that’s just 8 hours and 59 minutes more than I lasted.
Tonight, I’ll take my next shot at Event #3, the first FTOPS Shootout. It’s a full-table shootout, $500 + $35, with a maximum of 729 entries and a guarantee of $300,000. This one will work out for me. It better.
