The World Series of Poker is great and all, but wouldn’t it be better if there were four of them every year? The folks at Bovada certainly seem to think so. Their quad-annual online poker series is a mainstay of the tournament calendar that has pros and amateurs alike battling for big prizes. The first FTOPS of 2011, number XIX, is in its early stages, promising guaranteed tournaments totaling over $20 million.
Event #3 was in the books as of 1 am this morning, coming in at a relatively speedy 6 hours. With so many tournaments every year, Full Tilt can afford to try out a few experimental formats in each schedule. Last night’s event was no exception, featuring the brand new Multi-Entry system. This latest innovation is just like it sounds – any player can enter the tournament multiple times, up to a limit particular to each event.
Just to make things even more chaotic, Event #3 was also a Rush Poker tournament. The algorithms and calculations performed to swap everyone to a new table as soon as they fold their hand, while making sure they don’t collide with any of their multi-entry personas, gives one a new found respect for Full Tilt’s software.
The FTP tournament organizers, usually so spot on with their guaranteed prize pools, majorly undersold their experimental new format. The guarantee of $250,000 was almost quadrupled by the players who signed up, many registering for the maximum 4 slots. Once all the multi-entries had been totted up, the final prize pool stood at a staggering $987,300.
The Red Pros took to the Multi-Entry system like sharks to water; almost all of them entering the maximum four times. Event host Maxi Mueller led the way, even if she couldn’t get any of her avatars further than 514th.
It seems that if you give the best players in the world more than one crack at an event, there’s a good chance they’ll make the money. Among the cashing number were: James Dempsey (24th), Huck Seed (50th), Erick Lindgren (62nd), Jon Turner (127th & 272nd), Jono Karamalikis (128th), Niklas Heinecker (149th & 158th), Allen Cunningham (188th), Mihai Manole (256th), Shawn Buchanan (286th), and Thomas Bihl (338th).
The Multi-Entry system threw up a couple of unique instances. Chief among them was the case of bubble-boy Michael Tureniec. The Swedish Team Full Tilt member saw his penultimate entry exit in the unlucky 361st place, only to pilot his final account all the way to 2nd.
Preventing Michael from completing a unique bubble/victory double was Danish player Jonas Klausen. With over $2 million in online winnings, Jonas is no stranger to big scores, but the $182,650.50 first place prize money from Event #3 is still one of the largest of his career. Just behind them in third place was Frechman JHoWn, who FTOPS fans will remember as the winner of the Main Event just a few short months ago in FTOPS XVIII.
Final Table payouts were as follows:
1st Klausen $182,650.50
2nd MichaelTureniec $128,349.00
3rd JHoWn $87,869.70
4th toddybrun2 $65,161.80
5th citation3 $49,365.00
6th mossified84 $36,628.83
7th simon1471 $26,163.45
8th herbhealsme $18,561.24
9th callyoudownn $12,538.71
10th USCphildo $8,688.24