The Week at FTP: FTOPS, We Hardly Knew Ye

Posted by One Angry Monkey | Filed under The Week at FTP

And so it goes. FTOPS VIII is officially in the books, but please try to hold back your tears. After all, FTOPS IX is only a few short months away, so we’ll get to do it all over again very soon. For those of you who just can’t wait that long for more thrilling high-stakes action, the $25K Heads-Up World Championship kicks off this weekend. Don’t miss your chance to take on some of the world’s best players mano y mano – Nenad Medic will be there, will you?

As for FTOPS VIII – we’ve had some good times, we’ve had some bad times, and we’ve had quite a few gastro-intestinal problems. But overall, we’ve seen a lot of great poker being played over the past twelve days. Without further ado, here’s a recap of FTOPS through the eyes of one pissed off (and tired) primate:

The numbers never lie, but sometimes they can bend the truth…

Twelve days. 24 events. More than 38,000 players. A total prize pool worth a mind boggling $15,378,400. At least 750 cans of Coke Zero consumed by yours truly. Yes, these are the key stats from FTOPS VIII. We do FTOPS every three months, and somehow we keep getting bigger every damn time. They say the poker boom has fizzled out, but I just don’t see it. We might not be growing exponentially at this point, but poker is most definitely here to stay.

Money might be the root of all evil, but only if you don’t have any…

To the winners of events 19 through 24, congrats on a job very well done – may your newfound gobs of cash bring you much happiness. Will you buy a car with your money? Put a down payment on a house (there’s never been a better time to buy!)? Go to Vegas and do unthinkable things in unthinkable places? The numbers of options available for doing something stupid are limitless; it’s time to get busy. It may be Monday, but it’s never too early in the week to break out a little Wu Tang: cash rules everything around me (CREAM!). With that said, here are the winners and their winnings from Event #19 through the Main Event:

Event #19: Pot Odds 3 – $73,379.20

Event #20: mypokerlife – $41,700

Event #21: Halfrek – $516,925

Event #22: theASHMAN103 – $85,146

Event #23: elheroe – $124,020.22

Main Event: cheesemonster – $410,780

I’ve heard of getting hit by the deck before, but this is ridiculous…

To Halfrek, winner of both Event #11, the $1K buy-in NLH event, and Event #21, the $2,500 Two-Day Event – um, feel like staking a losing player in the next FTOPS? As I’ve said before, simply making the final table in one of these large donkaments is no small task, never mind actually taking the whole thing down. Now, winning two events in the same FTOPS – inconceivable! In case you’re wondering, Halfrek is the first player to win two events in the same FTOPS, a feat which I don’t think will be matched any time too soon. He’ll be going home with $859,420 in combined prize money from those two wins. There’s only one word rattling around in my brain at this moment: yowza! I haven’t completed all my calculations on this one yet, but it appears Halfrek has made more money over the past week than I stand to make in my entire lifetime. But don’t cry for me Tilters, I just heard the Peso is on the up.

When one day alone just won’t cut it…

Speaking of the Two-Day Event, I just felt it prudent to comment on one thing: what a frackin structure! (And yes, I may have just outed myself as a closet Battlestar Galactica fan − piss off.) The fact remains that this event was deep stacked throughout the entire tournament! Players started with 5,000 chips – 250 times the initial big blind – and the average stack remained at about 250 big blinds until the very end. As far as online poker goes, this is as close as it will ever get to resembling good old B&M. So here’s my salute to poker as it should be played, with lots of chips and allowing the cream of the crop to rise to the top. Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe my $5 Turbo SNG is about to start…

Main Event mania strikes again…

The Main Event truly lived up to its massive billing, with 4,750 entrants battling it out for a prize pool worth $2,375,000. At the end of the day (or the beginning of the morning, as it was), cheesemonster (insert cheese joke here) took home the top prize of more than $400K. Unfortunately, unlike in the FTOPS VIII Main Event, there were no Wahlroos sightings at the final table. We still live in anticipation of the day when we can combine the FTOPS gold jersey avatar with the walrus avatar. The very thought sends a shiver up my spine. Speaking of which…

Congratulations, you’ve just won a personalized avatar!

Congrats to kiwid10 on claiming the top spot on the FTOPS VIII Leaderboard. kiwid10 made a deep run in three FTOPS events, capturing enough points to steal the crown from Halfrek, who came in second (that’s what she said). Now let’s just hope kiwid10 isn’t too weird looking, lest his personalized avatar come out looking like a creature from the beyond. Other top finishers on the Leaderboard include xqsays and whothedonk, both of whom made multiple FTOPS final tables, and top pro finisher Berry Johnston. Speaking of the pros…

Sometimes your best just isn’t good enough…

Outside of Johnston and Scott Fischman having very strong FTOPS showings, the pros just couldn’t get it going like they did during FTOPS VII. This of course says nothing about the quality of our pros, but speaks volumes on the general quality of all the players who participate in FTOPS. These events are hard to do well in! Even with the large number of pros we have on the site these days, they still made up a very small percentage of the players who participated in each event. With that said, it would be nice to see a pro take down another one of these tourneys. FTOPS IX; it’s just around the corner guys.

And on a completely unrelated subject…

Last week we announced that Full Tilt Poker is having a Battle of the Bloggers Write Your Way to the WSOP contest. Just a little reminder that all you poker bloggers out there can write up a couple of blog posts that will win you a trip to Vegas for a week to check out the WSOP Main Event. There has been some controversy about this floating around the blogosphere, so I’m just here to say that we are in no way using this contest as a ruse to contract people to blog for us from the Main Event. This really is a prize you win as a reward for your writing, and the fact that you get to post a couple of blog entries here on The Rail should be seen as a good thing, not a death sentence. Phew, glad we’ve cleared the air on that one. With that said, I wish a good FTOPS to all, and to all a good FTOPS…

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