The Main Event of the ninth Full Tilt Online Poker Series wrapped up on Sunday night, with dubbeemin emerging victorious from a pack of 4,880 entrants. The $535 buy-in tournament fell $60,000 short of its $2.5 million guarantee, which may have been due to the competition from some of the other Sunday major tournaments on PokerStars, Bodog, and Ultimate Bet that were going on at the same time. The top five finishers pocketed at least $100,000; dubbeemin’s first place finish was worth a colossal $432,400. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from one of the largest online poker tournaments in history.
The FTOPS IX Main Event came with a $2.5 million guarantee. The top 648 spots paid out, let by dubbeemin, who took home $432,400. He defeated valleyho heads up, who nabbed a consolation prize worth $262,500. TheTotalPkg finished in third place, pocketing $170,000. Rounding out the sizable paydays at the final table were Pokerguru19 (fourth place for $132,500), sckilla (fifth place for $100,000), hemlock1313 (sixth place for $75,000), tvcsa (seventh place for $57,500), aaaFRANCESCOzzz (eighth place for $43,750) and TiltinShoes (ninth place for $32,500).
To put the payouts in perspective, the winner of the PokerStars Sunday Million, which is regularly the largest tournament held online, typically pockets between $180,000 and $200,000. Winning $432,400 online is unheard of. Congratulations to dubbeemin from all of us at Poker News Daily for winning the Full Tilt Online Poker Series Main Event.
Also wrapping up on Sunday night was Event #22 of FTOPS IX, the $2,620 Two-Day tournament. It was the fifth time that the Two-Day event was held as part of the FTOPS. Past winners have included Grndhg25, wuddacooler, csimmsux and Halfrek. First place in the Two-Day tournament went to hAAydon, won cashed for $541,650, one of the largest prizes ever given out in online poker. Heads up, he defeated triathlon4, who took home a healthy payday of $341,475. In third place was knickadam55, who cashed for $253,163. Other newly-rich Full Tilt Poker players at the final table included sebbau (fourth place for $194,288), BootySmooth (fifth place for $147,188), Tony G (sixth place for $105,975), theMightyZep (seventh place for $70,650), Yeshaya (eighth place for $55,107) and ClockWyze (ninth place for $40,035).
There were 942 entrants, meaning the $2 million guaranteed prize pool was reached. The actual prize pool topped $2.3 million and the top 90 finishers took home cash.
This weekend also saw the conclusion of the $129 knock-out event of the FTOPS, which had a $400,000 guarantee. Kroko-dill was the champion of this event, taking home $113,692 for first place. Hyperspiral, Scarypooper5, BeatProphet, soggy dogg, kennl, PapaWood619, c4s1n0 and vcehorosho all made the final table. Of the $129 buy-in, $100 went to the tournament’s prize pool, $9 went to Full Tilt Poker as a rake, and the remaining $20 were put on each player’s head as a bounty. Many players enjoy bounty tournaments because, even if a person doesn’t cash, they may still walk away with more money than they started with if they knock enough players out.
Next up for the online poker world is the 2008 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker, or WCOOP. The 33 event tournament series starts on September 5th and wraps up with a $5,200 buy-in Two-Day Main Event, which plays its final table on September 22nd.