FTOPS XIV continued last night with the first rebuy event of this year’s series. Actually, Event #4 was a $200 + $16 no-limit Hold’em tournament allowing 1 rebuy and 1 add-on and guaranteeing a prize pool of at least $600,000. This guarantee was surpassed as 1,406 players entered the game and purchased 979 total rebuys and 912 add-ons, swelling the prize to $659,400.
Andrew Black played host to this event and was joined by 18 other Full Tilt Poker Pros, including Berry Johnston, David Pham, Huck Seed, and Scott Fischman. The last pro standing was Ram Vaswani, a member of the famed Hendon Mob and the only player to reach the final table of 3 European Poker Tour events.
With such a nice prize pool there’s no doubt most players had their mind on the $141,771 first place prize. When play got down to the final table, there was mostly unknown players and a couple of very good players left, as is fairly typical for these large events. The two most well-known players, at least in Full Tilt tournament circles, were ProbBluffingYou (who also plays as ASPoker8 on PokerStars) and Doc Sands.
The action at the final table was pretty hectic, as players seemed unafraid to put all the money in the middle. Doc Sands was eliminated in 5th place, taking down $39,564 for the effort and solidifying his spot as one of the most feared players on Full Tilt. His wins this year include the $30 rebuy ($9,127), the $1K Monday ($89,250), the $50 rebuy ($19,857.25), and the Nightly Hundred Grand at PokerStars ($19,514.40). Oh, wait, that’s only since September!! He also won the Sunday 500 on Stars in August ($90,097.20), FTOPS XII Event #10 for $259,440 in May, The Fifty-Fifty ($10,953.50) and Sunday Mulligan ($53,020) in April along with numerous other 1st place finishes and countless final tables. In other words, he’s having a great year.
Outlasting them all though was Kiv56, who played heads-up with archwatcher for the title. Archwatcher was probably the most active player at the table, as he had built up a relatively large stack and seemed willing to use it to his advantage.
Final table standings and payouts:
1st – Kiv56 – $141,771
2nd – archwatcher – $89,678.40
3rd – Ballzdeepx – $66,599.40
4th – ProbBluffingYou – $52,752
5th – Doc Sands – $39,564
6th – nomaddman – $28,354.20
7th – YrrsiN – $18,463.20
8th – Cowboy3362 – $13,188
9th – GoCubsGo969 – $9,231.60