The Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) is back. The 19th installment of the popular quarterly series gets underway on Sunday and is comprised of 45 events of all formats and varieties, including Rush Poker tournaments, Cashout tournaments, and Multi-Entry tournaments.
Multi-Entry tournaments were added to the Full Tilt Poker client in January and were an instant hit. So much so that FTOPS XIX features nine of them, including the $640 Main Event on February 20th that has a $3 million guaranteed prize pool.
There were already 144 entries for the Main Event at the time of writing. Among the players with six entries registered included David “Doc Sands” Sands, Joseph “hoodini10” Udine, Shaun “tedsfishfry” Deeb, and Josh “professor plum” Prager. Team Full Tilt Pros Erick Lindgren and Huck Seed each had one entry registered. Lindgren is hosting the event.
While the Multi-Entry events were hugely successful during Double Guarantees Week in January, some players have already grown tired of the massive fields and added tables. “I’m thinking of boycotting the (FTOPS) Multi-Entry events,” explained Daniel “Deoxyribo” Strelitz. “Would rather not enter expensive tourneys with a relative low ROI.”
TwoPlusTwo forum poster “Blufforz” agreed, saying, “I don’t like the new Multi-Entry thing. They should create special Multi-Entry tournaments, not apply it to already existing tournaments. I played a tournament that was doubled in size because of this and they didn’t change the payouts and barely increased the amount of people who cash.”
Similar opinions surfaced on PocketFives.com this week. One player complained, “Just checked out the FTOPS schedule and noticed there isn’t any just plain old NLHE MTT. Not in all the 45 entries. They’re Multi-Entries, Rush, or other. Amazing you can have a 45-tourney series and not have one single-entry NLHE.”
The agitated poster did overlook the first FTOPS event on Sunday, February 6th, which is a $216 No Limit Hold’em freezeout. But, like many of the regular high-stakes players in the U.S., he will be participating in Super Bowl Sunday festivities instead of taking to the virtual felts.
That sparked a whole other discussion between players. With FTOPS XIX kicking off on Super Bowl Sunday, what were the high-stakes tournament specialists going to choose?
Joe “Dyzalot” Morneau presented his thoughts on the subject in a thread at PocketFives.com: “The Super Bowl is only once per year and is a de facto national holiday. I can play poker every day, Sundays 52 times a year, and FTOPS eight weeks out of the year. I’ll be attending a Super Bowl party.” Francis “The Lab Rat” Anderson echoed Morneau’s sentiments, saying, “Don’t think I’ve ever or will ever grind a Sunday session on Super Bowl Sunday.”
With the possibility of an overlay in the first FTOPS event, which has a $1 million guaranteed prize pool, some of the top players don’t want to miss out. Page “pageh656” Harris, who won the first event of FTOPS XVIII for $117,000, said, “Who gives a [expletive] about the Super Bowl? UFC Saturday night and the Sunday grind obviously.”
Then there are those who will tackle both. Said Paul “paulgees81” Volpe, the #3 ranked player on the PocketFives.com Worldwide Rankings, “(I’ll be) playing poker with friends and watching the Super Bowl … Might stop registering a little earlier. If the Eagles were playing, I wouldn’t be playing poker.”
FTOPS XIX Event #1 begins at 4:00pm ET on Sunday, more than two hours prior to the “Big Game” between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers. Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for results and updates from the series.
