Last night saw the return of a staple FTOPS event, the 6-max rebuy. The buy-in was set at $300, with a sizable $1,000,000 guaranteed ensuring the prize pool was well stocked. Although only 961 players opted to compete it seems they weren’t shy about reloading when their chips got low. A total of 1795 rebuys, complimented by 663 add-ons, swelled the prize pool to a total of $1,022,700 to be split between 120 players.
The tournament was hosted by Cardrunners.com instructor Cole South, who has made a name for himself as one of the most exciting cash game players online. Since taking up the game in 2005, Cole has built his bankroll to over $2 million by employing an extremely loose aggressive style. He is now a regular at the high stakes games on Full Tilt. Budding pros can gain an insight into his secrets at Cardrunners.com, one of the web’s most popular instructional sites.
Event #17 took over 11 hours to complete, a lengthy stretch, but not unusual for FTOPS events. The tournament’s host Cole South failed to make the money, but a couple of his sponsored compatriots did turn a profit. Young English pro Andrew Feldman added another impressive result to his resume, finishing in 48th. The only other Red Pro to finish in the money was TheWacoKidd, aka Jared Hamby in 113th. Known as an MTT specialist both live and online, Jared has three WPT money finishes and a WSOP main event cash to his name, along with multitudinous online profits.
Unlike many of the previous FTOPS XII tournaments, the heads up contest in Event #17 was relatively straightforward. The final three competitors entered play on similar stacks and things stayed that way until U_2Good4_Me pushed all-in preflop with KQ off-suit. mralan2950 made a quick call with A10, but was knocked out of the tournament when a Queen fell on the flop.
This gave U_2Good4_Me about $3.2 million, compared to his opponent stevie444, who held only $1.2 million. From then on it would be a little over an hour before the tournament concluded, with practically no big pots along the way. U_2Good4_Me set about playing consistent small ball poker, slowly grinding down his opponent until he held an advantage of around $4.5 million vs. $700k. At this point stevie444 began to cut his losses and push all-in multiple times. U_2Good4_Me would not be tempted however, and bided his time until he felt he had an edge.
The tipping point eventually came after about 30 minutes, with stevie444 putting it all-in preflop. U_2Good4_Me made the call and showed his Td-Qd, a clear favourite against stevie’s Jh-8d. A Queen on the flop all but settled the tournament, with a 9 on the turn giving stevie some small hope of a gutshot . However, it was not to be, and U_2Good4_Me walked away with a well deserved $213,232.95. His opponent, stevie444, received $142,155.30 for second place, while mralan2950 took home $101,247.30 in third.