As quick as it arrived, the 17th Full Tilt Online Poker Series is on its way out again, but not before hosting some of the biggest poker tournaments in the world. Yesterday afternoon, Event #26 was the focus of attention, featuring one of the more straightforward formats. Amid the Rush Poker and H.O.R.S.E. contests, Full Tilt has not forgotten that the most popular form of poker is still pure and simple No Limit Texas Hold’em. This $200 + $16 NLHE 6-max contest was one for the purists, with a strong $400,000 guarantee laid on by Full Tilt.
More than 2,400 players decided to take their shot at an FTOPS title, building the prize pool to $485,800. A total of 270 players would get their own slice of that cash, with the top prize rounding out at around $95,700. It would take 9 hours of wheeling and dealing before a victor could be named, the top prize eventually going to Boston3Party. He is a relatively unknown player, but one with pedigree in Full Tilt tournaments. Although this was easily the biggest score in his online career, he does have a few multi-thousand dollar cashes in his past.
In second place was a more well known face. KronicKiller, known to his friends at Matt Williams, is an established online force, so it was no surprise to see him picking up the $60,705.57 first place prize. Matt is one of the many up and coming young pros blazing a trail online. In his short career, he has already amassed around $800,000 in tournament winnings from Full Tilt and PokerStars – where he is known as smsuwrestler.
Sitting snug in the bronze medal position was luckydubs27, another relative unknown with a modest record of tournament success. He has accrued around $100k in Full Tilt tournament winnings since 2008 and can now add a $42,012.70 score to that total.
In the grand sprawling schedule of FTOPS XVII, this was a fairly minor event, which was reflected in the modest number of sponsored players who logged on to compete. Of course, just turning up isn’t enough to guarantee yourself a cash finish, as plenty of Red Pros found out. Among the big names who failed to turn a profit were Aaron Bartley, David Pham, Gavin Smith, Huck Seed, Ram Vaswani, and Vitaly Lunkin. There were a few success stories, with four members of Team Full Tilt taking home a portion of the prize pool. Esther Rossi (110th), Eunjong Byun (149th), Jeff Madsen (121st), and Joe Beevers (259th) all left Event #26 with fatter wallets.
Mr. Beevers will have been particularly pleased to squeak into the money, as it was his job to host the event. Every FTOPS tournament is hosted by one of their stellar roster of online pros and Hendon Mobber Beevers was the man on call for Event #26. The player known as “The Elegance” is a permanent fixture of the UK poker scene and has established himself as one of the world’s most consistent players. Along with Barny Boatman, Ross Boatman, and Ram Vaswani, he makes up the Hendon Mob, an elite group of English players who travel the poker circuit together, winning tournaments and destroying cash games. They are now all Full Tilt players and run the best tournament results database on the net. Among Joe’s most famous successes are victory in 2003 Irish Poker Open and the 2008 Poker Nations Cup.