Quite possibly the most anticipated FTOPS VIII tournament, event 21 did not disappoint. This is one of the most prestigious online poker tournaments that you can win, due to it’s high buy-in, deep structure, and because it is the only 2 day online poker tournament! This 2 day event was first started in FTOPS 7 and has become a huge success. This gives it more of a live poker feel, and it’s interesting combining the 2 aspects of live and online 꽁머니사이트 poker. The first day was set to end at the conclusion of level 17 or when the field is whittled down to the final two tables, whichever came first. Day 2 then resumed with the players the following day at 14:00 ET.
The buy-in for this tournament isn’t cheap, $2,500 + $120. And with a $1,500,000 guaranteed prize pool, you knew all the top pros would come out for this. Speaking of top pros, it was hosted by the well known Phil Ivey. Even if you aren’t into the poker scene you probably know who he is; he has a WPT title (and 9 final table), 5 WSOP Bracelets, and over $9 million dollars in tournament earnings. He is considered by many to be the best in the world. Ivey and 28 other red pros took their shot, along with countless other big named online professionals.
The $1.5 million guarantee was broken and nearly doubled when 899 players registered bumping it up to $2,247,500. This would end up paying 90 places, with 1st place being over a half million dollars! Many top players made it to the final 90, including JustLuck1337 in 84th, imabigkidnow 42nd, TravestyFund 35th, and others. The red full tilt pros that made it deep were Thomas Bihl who took 63rd, Bruce Buffer (why is he a red pro??) in 30th, the well known PearlJammed who finished 22nd, and Erick Kollmann just missed the final table in 12th place.
The final table was one of the toughest the FTOPS has seen so far, with players like IfHeDiesHeDies (aka Pudge714) who has gone deep many times in the Sunday Million and has over $300,000 in online earnings, ckingusc who has final tabled the Sunday Million and $100 rebuy and has over $350,000 in career earnings, lilfishy897, better known as Ralph “driftdc5″ Michalowski, who has final tabled many large tournaments such as a the Sunday Mulligan with over $200,000 in online earnings, and someone who is no stranger to the FTOPS, Halfrek. Halfrek has had what you could call a good FTOPS, because if you remember he had already won an event this year! If you look back to the summary of the FTOPS Event 11, you will see Halfrek sitting on top scoring $342k in the $1050 nlhe. Could he possibly score another FTOPS win? The other players not mentioned yet are certainly no strangers to the game, but not big on tournaments; philivey567 (no not THE Phil Ivey), JRShaffy, TheStein, binrich, and Hoss_TBF.
The entire tournament was a battle, and took a very long time to complete. This is because of the deep stacks, players started with 5000 chips at 10/20 blinds, and they slightly increased every 30 minutes. You could not play a hand for 3 hours and still have a 50 bb stack. When day 2 began, there were only 18 players left. However, it still took another 9 hours before we were declared a winner. Everyone was able to be patient and wait for others to make mistakes. That seemed to be the style of the eventual winner, Halfrek, who topped JRShaffy heads up!
As mentioned earlier, Halfrek previously won FTOPS event 11, and earned $342k. Well, now he can say he is one of the few (maybe the only?) person to win 2 FTOPS events in the same series, this time taking home $517k! What an unbelievably sick run for Halfrek, and now has over $1.4 million in online poker tournament winnings! He is currently ranked number 1 on OPR, and probably will be for some time. Congratulations to Halfrek, who obviously had the best FTOPS than anyone else, and everyone else who made the final table in this 2 day event!
Here is everyone who finished in the money in event 21 of the FTOPS 8, $2620 2-Day NLH:
1 Halfrek $516,925.00
2 JRShaffy $325,887.50
3 IfHeDiesHeDies $241,606.25
4 philivey567 $185,418.75
5 binrich $140,468.75
6 ckingusc $101,137.50
7 TheStein $67,425.00
8 lilfishy897 $52,591.50
9 Hoss_TBF $38,207.50
10 JayJay1 $21,351.25
