The Full Tilt Online Poker Series XVIII continued Friday, November 12th, with the tournament series’ first rebuy/add-on tournament: FTOPS XVIII Event 5. Full Tilt Poker guaranteed at least a $600,000 prize pool that enticed 1,223 players to register. Players were allowed to rebuy and add-on only once; a total of 830 players did rebuy and 761 added onto their stack during the break. Full Tilt Poker was forced to overlay the tournament by $37,200 to meet the $600,000 guarantee. This was great news for players in the tournament as extra money was added to the existing prize pool.
James Blake, Team Full Tilt’s newest acquisition, hosted the rebuy event. James Blake is not known for his poker play but is instead known for being an outstanding tennis player. He is ranked tenth in tennis among all American men. He has earned $6.9 million over his career as a tennis player. He has a love for the game of poker and has joined Team Full Tilt Poker to be an ambassador of poker in the sports world. He was featured in Bravo’s second season of Celebrity Poker Showdown.
A number of Full Tilt Red Pros entered the tournament to try and win a piece of Full Tilt’s overlay. Among those that entered was Allen Cunningham, Andy Bloch, Brandom Adams, Gavin Smith, and host James Blake. All the mentioned Red Pros were unable to finish in the money with Gavin Smith coming the closest with a 148th place finish (144 players were paid in FTOPS XVIII Event 5).
The tournament finished 9.5 hours after its 14:02 ET start. The final table was packed with poker professionals such as Ami “UhhMee” Barer, Rodney “BIGFLOPPER01” Burt, Brandon “BRiha5254” Riha, and Jeff “YoungSupremacy” Hakim. The other two players sitting at this difficult final table were damnhomie0 and OlyDaJew. In the end, Ami won the day’s biggest first place finish of $122,700 and the golden jersey by beating BIGFLOPPER01 heads-up. BIGFLOPPER01 won $81,000 for his second place finish, a rather nice sum of money. The final table placed as follows:
1st – Ami “UhhMee” Barer – $122,700
2nd – Rodney “BIGFLOPPER01” Burt – $81,000
3rd – Elad “damnhomie0” Nosimaj – $57,000
4th – Brandon “BRiha5254” Riha – $42,600
5th – Jeff “YoungSupremacy” Hakim – $30,600
6th – Ryan “OlyDaJew” Olisar – $20,100