FTOPS Main Event

I'm writing this entry because, quite frankly... I'm really damn excited. I just won a seat to the Full Tilt Poker $500+35 Sunday February 17th's FTOPS Main Event, the 2 Million Dollar Guarantee hosted by Allen Cunningham.

For any of you who would care to know, here's how I got in:

On Thursday, I played a 300 FTP sit n go and took it down, rather easily. People threw their chips around carelessly in the early stages and I was able to get heads up with some guy when I had about 9500 to his 4000 at the blind levels of 30/60. After an hour-long bout (mainly because he played WAY too tight for heads up play), I won, gaining entry into the next level of qualifier.

The next tournament took place Saturday night at 8:30pm. It was a 2500 FTP buy-in, which I didn't have, and it would allow a maximum of 3600 players. The top 72 finishers would win seats into the $500+35 Main Event. We had a total of 3577 players at the start and I did pretty well. The first 2000 players busted within the first hour, and I just kept trying to get my money in good or with huge draws+great odds... and it seemed to work. I played pretty loose early on, looking to gamble with odds or hit big hands. The biggest reason I stayed alive is that I won most of my races (ie- I hit my flush draws and my two-pair would hold up against villain draws).

The hand of the tournament had to be this one: I have about 40,000 chips with around 350 players left and the blinds are 600/1200 with antes.

Everyone folds to me in the SB and I make it 4000 with 10, 10. The Big Blind has about 28,000 and calls. Flop comes 2 3 4 with two hearts.

I hate this flop.

But I have to bet, because odds are I have the best hand unless he either a) flopped a set or b) somehow has A5 or 65.

I bet out 7200 into a pot of about 9500 and the villain instantly pushes all-in for his remaining 24,000. Now I'm being laid great odds (14,500 into a pot of 38,400) but calling and losing WILL cripple me to about 12,000. I thought about it for a minute and decided, well I know he has a flush draw, and with this low of a board... he's also got overs.. meaning I'm actually an underdog. But I had to call and did. He shows QJ of hearts and misses twice. I bust him and then let out a tribal yell here in front of my computer.. After that, I just kept going with sound play and a little luck (or a little lack of bad luck, I should say).

The tournament starts to get really interesting when we get down to the last 200 players. At this point, I've been through countless big confrontations and had a top 10 stack of around 94,000. Blinds were 1200/2400 with antes and I was simply looking to stay alive and pick off easy pots to maintain my chips.

I had just gotten moved away from Scott Fischman's table and still had it up when I saw what they were talking about. They said, "check out table 56". So I did, and table 56 had 9 players all of whom were in the chip range of 17,000 to 5,000... so I thought, wow.. how'd all these low chip players get together.... well it took about five seconds to figure out how.

They did it by making an agreement to pass their blinds around to each other, taking the maximum 20 seconds per decision to fold. All nine of them were doing it and the entire tournament went berserk.

They were obviously colluding so I called George to talk about it. He said it's only collusion if they verbally agree to do it in the chat box on Full Tilt Poker. And the way they were talking about it suggested to me that they had already done it and were trying to be careful with their speech at this point... saying things like "wow, I've been getting 7 2 for the past two hours... this is amazing."

Then, out of nowhere, Scott Fischman comes in and types "what you are doing is cheating and you are all being reported. it's called collusion".

It was hilarious, everyone went nuts... but all of the people on table 56 continued to do it. Eventually the blinds reached the ridiculous stages of 2000/4000, 3000/6000 and 4000/8000. They finally started busting and some other players from other tables were joining them. And by this point, everyone had known exactly what was going on. As soon as this guy named "Drews Game" got to their table with about 60,000, he started raising every hand... totally screwing up their plan. It worked too, all but two of them busted before we got down to 72 players.

Long story short, I'm really glad I hadn't been bubble boy because of that. I may have lost my mind. But either way, I'm in. Ended up placing 8th (Fischman 9th if it matters)... but as soon as we got to 72 players, everyone just went all-in every hand. Was a long grind, took about 6 hours.. but I pulled it off. I'm competing for the top cash prize of $354,100 for the whopping price of 300 FTPs.

Finally... my rake did something GOOD for a change.