This season’s FTOPS Main Event at Full Tilt was the first we have seen since the introduction of Multi-Entries to certain tournaments. This lead to a hugh field of 14,479 entrants (the biggest ever) with the $3 million guarantee being well and truely smashed. The prizepool came to $8,687,400 and the top prizes were huge:

1st: $1,326,044.74
2nd: $890,458.50
3rd: $629,836.40
4th: $451,744.80
5th: $321,433.80

1890 places won some money in total.

WSOP Bracelet winner Blair Hinkle had a great run and had a sizeable chip advantage with 3 players left.

The players negociated a chop which saw Hinkle secure over $1.1 million of the max possible ~$1.3 million. As it played out though, GIAMPP took the title, even though Hinkle was still the biggest money winner (despite finishing in 2nd place).

1. GIAMPP - $877,949.74*
2. blur5f6 - $1,162,949.74* (Blair Hinkle)
3. SirMad - $805,440.26*
4. Nayza - $451,744.80
5. WiLDmAn75 - $321,433.80
6. J NOCK - $230,216.10
7. 425wedabest - $165,060.60
8. beerocrat - $121,623.60
9. Colonel Mustard - $86,005.26

Up to 6 entries were allowed per person in the tournament, and many players took up that facility, including Hinkle who entered 6 times (and many other pros and higher rollers did likewise). None of his other entries cashed, but he sure made up for that with the entry that did. GIAMPP entered just once, proving that the principle of quality over quantity still applies and that there isnt really any huge advantage to playing multiples beyond just having the opportunity to play 6 very big tournaments rather than 1. SirMad entered 2 times out of the maximum of 6, just to complete the summary of the top players.

The chop by Blair was particularly good when you look at 3rd place. He secured around half a million dollars on top of the scheduled prize payout for the next to bust. Perhaps technically speaking it would be wiser for the 2 shorter stacks to play on or negociate harder. But that’s easy to say from a distance. Few can deny them the desire to lock up that extra 200K or so.

Next on the agenda for Full Tilt is to run the same 45 FTOPS Events, but at a 10th of the original buy-ins (the so called “MiniFTOPS”). If you fancy giving some of the events a try then sign-up to Full Tilt and receive a $600 bonus.

It is very rare that more than one member of the same family wins a WSOP bracelet in their entire lifetime, but for the Hinkle brothers it has happened in the same year.   Adding to Grant Hinkle’s bracelet in Event 2, his brother bagged some WSOP bling in Event 23

WSOP Event 23 - $2000 NL Hold’em  - 1344 entrants
1 $ 507,563 Blair Hinkle  
2 $ 326,552 Mark Brockington  
3 $ 198,132 Daniel O’Brien  
4 $ 166,333 David Steicke  
5 $ 135,757 Dustin Dirksen  
6 $ 106,404 Chris Bjorin  
7 $ 81,944 Dominik Kulicki  
8 $ 63,598 Andrew Jeffreys  
9 $ 45,252 Stephane Tayar  
10 $ 29,108 Alessandro Dalbello  
11 $ 29,108 Nick Niergarth  
12 $ 29,108 Rick LeNoble  
13 $ 22,993 Yue Huang  
14 $ 22,993 Matthew Lagarde  
15 $ 22,993 Mike Ellis  
16 $ 16,878 Dean Schneider  
17 $ 16,878 Scott Preston  
18 $ 16,878 Corwin Cole