The 19th installment of the FullTilt Online Poker Series is underway! FTOPS XIX, home to 45 events over the next two weeks, was officially kicked off Sunday with Event #1, a $216 buy-in, $1,000,000 Guaranteed tournament. The event was hosted by famous poker professional Huck Seed. Seed is a familiar face having played many times on Poker After Dark as well as the National Heads-Up Championship on NBC. Even with his TV success he is still best known for winning the World Series of Poker Main Event back in 1996. Huck was joined by 56 other FullTilt sponsored professionals including the likes of Scott Clements, Peter “Apathy” Jetten, Eli Elezra, and fellow WSOP ME Champion Carlos Mortensen. Both Maxi Mueller and Joao Barbosa represented the FullTilt contingent nicely finishing in 20th and 45th place respectively.
It was a tall task for anyone, let alone a pro, to make it to the final table. With more than 6,600 players in the field the tournament took nearly 12 hours to finish! The $1,321,400 prize pool was a great way to kick off FTOPS XIX and it left $218,031 to the champion. The difference in first and second prize money was nearly $70,000 and came down to David “OSUTexan” Welker and Stefan “Mattssons” Mattsson who decided to kill the variance and make a chip chop agreement. As Welker had a nice chip lead he was awarded just over $191,000 while Mattsson secured himself $176,944 for his efforts. These both appear to be career scores for the two and left Welker with the title and the vaunted FTOPS Gold Jersey Avatar!
Other players making deep runs included Corey “Comandr_Cool” Burbick (30th), Rafi “rafiboy” Amit (37th), Phil “USCPhildo” Collins (52nd), and Scott “SCTrojans08” Freeman (90th). Congrats goes to Welker, Mattsson, and all 900 players making the money in FTOPS XIX Event #1!!
FTOPS XIV Event #1 $1M Guaranteed
6,607 Entrants; $1,321,400 prize pool
*2-way chop
1. OSUTexan $191,065
2. Mattssons $176,944
3. Fonsemand $109,676
4. halunited07 $81,926
5. Drf1209 $59,463
6. Ghiogghiero $42,284
7. petit_bourgeois $28,145
8. o mrBuBbLeS o $19,556
9. RiverRuben $13,742