The 17th installment of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series got underway yesterday with Event #1, $200+$16 NL Hold’em $750k Guaranteed. FullTilt began the online tournament series craze in August 2006 and has since run anywhere from 2-4 each year. FTOPS XVII is the third series of the year at Bovada Poker and is looking to build off successful pair of events taking place in February and May. Event #1 got FTOPS XVII off to a great start. The $750,000 guaranteed event needed 3,750 players to reach its guarantee. That number was easily surpassed as 4,591 competitors ponied up the $200+$16 buy-in fee yesterday evening.
Forty-Six of those players were FullTilt sponsored professionals including the host of Event #1 Huck Seed. Seed is well known poker professional who won the 1996 World Series of Poker Main Event for $1,000,000. He has three other bracelets to his name but has not won one since the $5,000 Razz Championship in 2003. Seed has made a name for himself lately by his strong showings in the NBC Heads-Up Championship including a win in 2009. Huck has cashed in every single running of the HU Championship and has posted a lifetime 18-4 record. Seed has a big following in the online poker world due to his tendency to participate in interesting prop bets for large sums of money. Unfortunately for his fans Huck busted just shy of the money in 766th place and was never a factor in Event #1.
While the host was out before the money there were still plenty of Full Tilt professionals who made deep runs in the first tournament of FTOPS XVII. The best showing came from Lee Watkinson who ultimately bubbled the final table after busting in 13th place. Watkinson is a live tournament grinder who has seen a lot of success in both WSOP and WPT events. In 2006 he won the PLO World Champiinship for $655,746 and the very next year found himself at the 2007 WSOP Main Event Final Table. Unfortunately for Lee he could do no better than an eighth place finish taking home just over $585,000. Other professionals making the money in FTOPS Event #1 included Lacey Jones (523rd), Michael Craig (164th), Vitaly Lunkin (91st), Esther Rosse (250th), Andrew Feldman (231st), and Aaron Bartley (269th). In total 540 players cashed but only nine of them could make the final table.
The final table was headlined by a few solid tournament players including Brent “Brobert85” Roberts and Sam “sammy_grinder” Grafton. Roberts had to be widely considered the best player left once Watkinson busted and he proved as much by winning Event #1 for $164,357. Believe it or not this wasn’t the first time Roberts has tasted major success on the online poker scene. With three major wins to his name and well over $1,000,000 in cashes between PokerStars and FullTilt, he is truly one of the more decorated online tournament players of the past few years. His first big score came in FTOPS Event #6 in 2008 which he won for $75,250. He followed that up by winning the WCOOP $530 re-buy Event #36 in 2009 for $230,480 and then won the SCOOP $2,100 PLO Championship earlier this year for $104,760. If anyone was not going to be nervous heading into the final table it was Roberts. All of that experience certainly paid off as he took down the title, a huge pay-day, and another FTOPS Gold Jersey Avatar. One has to wonder, if you win multiple FTOPS events do you get a special avatar?
Congratulations go to all 540 players who participated and cashed in FTOPS XVII Event #1!!
FTOPS XVII Event #1 $750k Guaranteed
4,591 Entrants; $918,200 prize pool
1. Broberts85 $164,357
2. Doorbread $113,856
3. sammy_grinder $81,536
4. safadave1 $60,601
5. o_Omx $44,991
6. 2PAIRDUECESUP $31,218
7. LarryDavid23 $21,118
8. bigdrug77 $14,691
9. foldgish $10,100