February 6th marked the return of a popular series of tournaments held on Full Tilt Poker called the Full Tilt Online Poker Series VII (FTOPS). The event attracted online poker players, both amateurs and pros, from all around the world. The original FTOPS had seven preliminary events and a main event championship. FTOPS VII featured 20 tournaments ranging from no-limit and pot-limit hold'em, HORSE, pot-limit Omaha, no-limit hold'em with rebuys, Omaha/8, HA (pot-limit, half hold'em half Omaha), stud, razz, and a no-limit knockout event. FTOPS VII also included tournaments with six-handed tables including limit and no-limit hold'em, and pot-limit Omaha.
A different Full Tilt Poker pro hosted each of the events. That list of pros included Jonathan Little, Ben Roberts, Andy Bloch, Gus Hansen, Clonie Gowen, Niki Jedlicka, Peter "Nordberg" Feldman, Peter Jepsen, Erick Lindgren, Bill Edler, Howard Lederer, Scott Clements, Rino Mathis, Huckleberry Seed, Joe Beevers, David Chiu, Scott Fischman, Thomas Wahlroos, Dag Mikkelsen, and Allen Cunningham, who hosted the $500 buy-in no-limit main event.
The largest cash at FTOPS VII was for $488,175 by csimmsux, who won event 17, $2,500 NL. It was a special two-day tournament with 849 entrants. Previous FTOPS tournaments had been only one-day events, until Full Tilt debuted a two-day event with FTOPS V. The first-place finish in event 17 marked the second FTOPS event win for csimmsux, who won event 13 in FTOPS V.
Erick Lindgren won event 9, $300 NL, which happened to be the same event that he hosted. The low buy-in attracted over 5,637 runners. The influx of dead money meant that the prize pool swelled to almost $1.7 million. The tournament ran for almost 12 hours and Lindgren beat Kochan heads-up to win. In the most decisive hand of the tournament, Lindgren crippled Kochan when he flopped trips with K-6 against Kochan's top pair. On the final hand of the tournament, Kochan was all in with pocket queens against Lindgren's jacks. Kochan flopped a set, but Lindgren caught a runner-runner flush for the win. Lindgren collected $291,748 for first place, which marked his largest cash since he won $1 million AUD (almost $800,000 US) at the 2007 Aussie Millions. It was also his sixth-largest tournament cash overall.
Lindgren's victory ended a rough drought for Full Tilt pros, who have never won an event in any of their previous FTOPS series. According to Full Tilt blogger Michael Craig, "It has not only lifted the curse on red pros winning at FTOPS but Erick is obviously the first red pro to host an event and go on to win it." Only two other Full Tilt pros advanced to a final table in FTOPS VII-Thomas Wahlroos took second in the main event and Ram Vaswani finished in ninth place in event 17.
The $500 buy-in no-limit main event attracted 5,291 runners. Although it had a $2 million guaranteed prize pool, the final prize pool went over $2.6 million. Reverse won the main event and collected $456,401 for first place. Reverse beat Thomas Wahlroos (a Full Tilt pro from Finland) heads-up for the championship.
The twenty FTOPS VII winners represented six countries including the U.S. (10), Canada (4), Norway (2), Finland, UK, Sweden, and Denmark. The North Americans dominated, winning 14 of the total 20 events. Meanwhile the Nordic countries fared well, picking up five titles even though the majority of Full Tilt Poker's player base is in North America. The prize pool for the entire FTOPS VII was $15,353,500! Six events paid out at least $1 million and two events paid out over $2 million. Five of the event winners took home at least $250,000. That's an insane amount of money to win without having to leave your own home.
