One of the biggest events of MiniFTOPS XVII came to an end Tuesday morning. Event #16, a $100+$9 deep-stack NL tournament, attracted more than 4,000 players creating a $401,100 prize pool. The tournament was initially guaranteed for just $300,000 but easily bust through that mark with time to spare. With just 450 players making the money there was plenty of action as players held much deeper stacks than in normal events.
The super-stack structure along with a bigger buy-in brought out a lot of FullTilt sponsored professionals including Event #16 host Eli Elezra. A Las Vegas based businessman, Elezra is mostly known as a high-stakes cash game specialist who has appeared on shows such as GSN’s “High Stakes Poker” and NBC’s “Poker After Dark”. Elezra is a feared mixed game competitor who has honed his skills over the years by playing in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Unfortunately Elezra couldn’t find his way into the money in Event 16 as he busted in 3134th place.
Eli was joined by nearly 30 other FullTilt sponsored professionals including Lee Watkinson, David Pham, Steve Zolotow, and Toto Leonidas. A handful of the FullTilt crew made the money including Jono Karamalikis who nearly final tabled Event 16 before busting in 14th place. Known as “xMONSTERxDONGx” before becoming a FullTilt Pro Karamalikis was and is one of the best online tournament players in the world. With nearly $2,000,000 in combined cashes between FullTilt and PokerStars he has proven himself on the biggest stage in both FTOPS and WCOOP events. Other professionals making the money included Somyung Sim, Steve Brecher, and Svetlana Gromenkova who all finished outside the top 100.
The final table was highlighted by a former MiniFTOPS champion, “Shreddar12”, who won MiniFTOPS XVI Event #5 earlier this year for a $70,200 payday. As they say history has a funny way of repeating itself as he again took down a huge score winning Event #16 for $79,417. Coming in third was Steve “fishfinder22” Bungay, a mid-stakes grinder with a bunch of solid scores to his name including a $57,195 win in the Super Tuesday last year on PokerStars. The rest of the final table was full of relatively unknown players who could not unseat shreddar12 for the title. Stay tuned for more updates on MiniFTOPS XVII and the 2010 WCOOP through FlopTurnRiver.com!
Congratulations goes to shreddar12 and all 450 players who made the money in MiniFTOPS XVII Event #16!
FullTilt MiniFTOPS XVII Event #16 $300k Guaranteed
4,011 Entrants; $401,100 prize pool
1. shreddar12 $79,417
2. nutzkrackr $48,934
3. fishfinder22 $34,296
4. Bob_A7 $24,868
5. pvanharibo $18,049
6. Weaviek $12,033
7. pokerdawg1990 $8,022
8. kwer18 $5,615
9. erimd $4,011