Players looking for action Tuesday night were served up with a special Turbo tournament courtesy of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series. Event #14 of FTOPS XVI was a turbo-format which means the blinds were increased every 5 minutes as opposed to a standard structure which sees the blinds go up every 10 or 15 minutes. This faster structure forces players to be more aggressive and stack-off with worse hands because they are left with fewer Big Blinds earlier in the tournament. Turbo tournaments require a different skill set than regular tournaments as players are forced into push/shove mode much earlier and have to rely more on the mathematics of tournament poker than the ability to out-play their opponents after the flop.
More than 2,300 players entered the tournament which started at 18:00 FullTilt Lobby time. The tournament carried a $400,000 guarantee which was easily bested as the prize pool reached $465,800 before registration ended. Nearly 30 FullTilt sponsored professionals played in Event #14 including big names such as Scott Clements, David Pham, and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson. The event was hosted by FullTilt Red Pro Martin Klaeser who took down the 2008 WSOP PLO/8b tournament for $216,249 and his one and only bracelet. Online his best finish as been a win in the $17.5K Guarantee on FullTilt for $12,728. He did make the final table of a Sunday Major, the Brawl, just last month but busted early in 7th place for $11,652.
234 players made the money in Event #14 including a few FullTilt professionals. The best finish was by Ram Vaswani, who took home $721 for his 73rd place finish. Joining Vaswani in the money was Berry Johnston who finished in 104th place. A few pros finished on the bubble including Christian Kruel (253rd) and Marco Liesy (249th). The final table went by quickly as the blinds escalated and the average chip stack was was well below 20 Big Blinds. There was $94,999.01 on the line for the winner and it seemed the final few players were looking for a chip-chop. Play was stopped with 4 players remaining but players could not settle on a deal. Just one hand later “DNA2RNA” was eliminated in 4th place for $34,469.20 when his Pocket Sevens lost a race to “I Pay Ur Rent” who held Kd9d:
Just after that elimination the final three players again paused the tournament to discuss a deal. Once again that idea was put to rest quickly and in the blink of an eye “alpot” was busted in 3rd place when I Pay Ur Rent again came out on the fun side of a coin flip as his Pocket Twos held up against K4o. Alpot was eliminated in 3rd and took $45,648 for his efforts.
When heads-u play began, I Pay Ur Rent had a sizable chip-lead over “TheDestroyer531” who had less than 1,000,000 chips at 60,000/120,000 blinds. A quick double up turned the 4:1 chip lead into a dead-heat as TheDestroyer531 called a shove pre-flop with Kc8c and won against I Pay Ur Rent’s As3c. With each player having just more than 2,200,000 in chips the chop talks continued and after five minutes a deal was struck. The players left $4,000 on the table and each agreed to take $76,242 in prize money. TheDestroyer531 had to be pretty happy he took the deal because just a few hands later he took a horrendous beat for what could have been more than $33,000. The players got their money all-in before the flop with TheDestroyer531 holding Pocket Queens and his opponent holding just JcTc. The board ran out Ad6s2cKhQh and the two outer pretty much sealed the deal for I Pay Ur Rent. With just a few Big Blinds remaining the two got their money in awfully light and once again I Pay Ur Rent won a keep all-in to take down the title, an extra $4,000, and the vaunted FTOPS Gold Jersey Avatar:
FullTilt FTOPS XVI Event #14 $400k Guaranteed
2,329 Entrants; $465,800 prize pool
*2-way chop
1. I Pay Ur Rent $80,242
2. TheDestroyer531 $76,242
3. alpot $45,648
4. DNA2RNA $34,469
5. tonya720 $24,221
6. nevio $15,837
7. kamsky4 $10,713
8. lcky4leafclover $7,452
9. Tankcom1 $5,589