MiniFTOPS XIII blasts off

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

Wow.

That’s all I was saying last night as I watched the number of entrants sour through the roof for MiniFTOPS XIII Event #1. I would generally wait until the end of the week to do a little recap of the last few events but this turnout warranted it’s own post. 16,750 players for a mid-week, late-night (for my time zone) tournament is incredible. A prizepool of $335,000 with over $50,000 going to first place, all for a tiny buyin of $20+2 or satellite for as little as 75c. The event brought out a baker’s dozen of Team Full Tilt including fellow FTP blogger Michael Craig, Lee Watkinson, Roy Winston, and Scott Fischman. Jon “Pearljammer” Turner was the last pro standing but fell short of the cash.

Professional player Mike “GoLeahsGoEh” Leah was my interesting story of the event. I am spending my next two weeks camped out at the Borgata Hotel and Casino for the WPT event, a little writing and a little playing. Leah was seen here in the tournament room yesterday afternoon competing in their first event of the series but busted out in the late afternoon. Just a few hours later and I was railing him in MiniFTOPS Event #1 and he was tearing up the field. He went on to finish 273rd out of 16,750 and is now sitting in the live tournament room competing again.

The tournament ran an incredible 12 hours, finishing up at 9am my time. Long after my eyes were closed and I was dreaming of bracelets, trophies and little avatar jerseys. The time from start to bubble seemed to fly but there is only so many ways to bust players out. Sitting at the final table, the average chip stack was jus south of 10,000,000 and I was amazed to see that no one made a deal when things were short-handed. Here’s how everything was paid out in the end:

1st – leoelectric – $50,250
2nd – zcooper123 – $33,500
3rd – rova33 – $23,450
4th – Bio72 – $16,750
5th – Chantastic1 – $11,725
6th – ZBTHorton – $8,710
7th – Shadi888 – $6,301
8th – OMGlefty – $4,623
9th – Gags30 – $3,283

My personal MiniFTOPS experience was postponed by one game as I wandered the tables in search of stories and pictures. There were quite a few young guns from the online world in the live field including Matt “All in at 420″ Stout who mentioned to the table that he was missing this MiniFTOPS game, I tried to keep track of his sister for him while he played. We’ve already proven that their will be quite a number of players dividing their time between the live poker world here and the online world during this series.

There are two more MiniFTOPS events today. Event #2 (6-max NLHE Shootout) is already sold out at 1,296 players but there is plenty of room for the 21:00ET Event #3 ($20+2 Limit Omaha/8). You can find the complete schedule here. This looks to be a great series of events for the smaller bankrolled players, giving everyone an opportunity for a big money boost and experience in large field tournaments. My plan is to pony up the money for the Omaha/8 and prepare for my Borgata run at the live version fo the game tomorrow.

Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, MiniFTOPS