Never one to miss out on the opportunity to start a new poker series, Full Tilt Poker has announced MTOPS, the Micro Turbo Online Poker Series. The action is set to kick off this coming Sunday, June 9th, and will run for two weeks through June 23rd.
MTOPS is a chance for those who want to feel the excitement of a poker series like FTOPS (the Full Tilt Online Poker Series), but just don’t have the bankroll with which to participate. Like its name implies, MTOPS features extremely low buy-in tournaments, the vast majority ranging from $0.55 to $5.50. One doesn’t cost any money at all – just 100 Full Tilt Points – while the Main Event will cost $15 to enter. At those prices, even this author can afford to enter a few tourneys (being able to play on Full Tilt is a whole other story).
There are 75 events in all with $2 million in guaranteed prize pools across the entire Series. Most events, as one might expect, are No-Limit Hold’em, but there is plenty of variety up and down the schedule. Other games included are Omaha, Stud, Irish Poker, Courchevel, HORSE, Razz, Badugi, and Triple Draw, as well as plenty of variations like Pot-Limit, Fixed-Limit, Rush, and Knockout.
All tournaments will be of the Turbo variety, with some being Super Turbo or the new Escalator blind format. Every event will also be Multi-Entry, meaning that players can buy-in more than once and play at more than one table simultaneously. Should a player do well enough that he has more entries remaining than tables, two of his entries will combine into one. Each tournament has its own multi-entry limit, so check the schedule to be sure how many times you can buy-in.
Of particular note is the first event in the inaugural MTOPS, the $1.10 “New to the Game” tournament. Players who will be eligible for this event will be those who have yet to play 75 multi-table tournaments. The “New to the Game” event features a $10,000 guaranteed prize pool.
As is the case with all of Full Tilt’s tournament series’, players will earn points depending on how they finish in each event and those with the most points will show up on the MTOPS leaderboard. The overall leader at the end of MTOPS will receive over $1,900 in tournament entries, including a seat in the next FTOPS Main Event.
That same prize will also be awarded to the winner of the MTOPS Multi-Entry Challenge. In this contest, players will earn points every time they have at least two entries cash in a single tournament, with more points going to those who cash with more entries. Additionally, anyone who merges two of their stacks in a tourney will receive a $75 MiniFTOPS XXIII Main Event ticket. Those who merge three or more stacks will get a $500 cash bonus. Players can earn multiple $75 MiniFTOPS tickets for merging stacks in more than one event, but only the first ticket will be used.
The entire 75 event schedule of MTOPS can be found on Full Tilt Poker’s website.