The Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS)
Please Note - USA players will not be able to play in any FTOPS series. Full Tilt Poker has stopped accepting USA players. Check this page for a list of sites that do take Americans.
Full Tilt Poker is home to the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS), the second largest online poker tournament series in the world (next to the PokerStars WCOOP). Full Tilt hosted the first FTOPS in August of 2006, which debuted as an eight-tournament series with a combined guaranteed prize pool of a little over $1 million. Since then there have been a total of thirteen FTOPS events, and FTOPS XIV is wrapping up at the time of this writing.
FTOPS tournaments are popular with online players because they give entrants a shot at enormous prize pools that are usually found in only the biggest live poker tournaments. Also, Full Tilt runs an abundance of FTOPS satellites, which gives smaller stakes players a shot at big FTOPS money.
History of the FTOPS
The first FTOPS was held in August of 2006, and consisted of eight poker tournaments culminating in the $535 No Limit Hold'em Main Event, which was won by "crownnginger" for $161,000. In total, there was a prize pool of roughly $2 million, which was a huge amount for an online poker series back in 2006. Since that first series in 2006, FTOPS have ran every three months, and have gotten bigger and bigger. In fact, FTOPS XIII was the biggest series yet, with a first place prize of over $450,000 for the winner of the Main Event.
FTOPS originally included a mixture of Hold'em and Omaha 9-handed tournaments, but recently have expanded to include Seven Card Stud, Mixed Games, Bounty tournaments, and Shorthanded tournaments (6-handed, 4-handed, and heads-up). The FTOPS are truly the ultimate test of an online player's skill, because you have to demonstrate prowess across a wide variety of games and formats.
One way that Full Tilt has made the FTOPS even more interesting is by keeping a running leaderboard for all FTOPS events, past and present. The FTOPS leaderboard is set up similar to the PokerStars Tournament Leaderboard, and rewards players with "Chips" for making it deep in an FTOPS event. Players earn Chips based on how deep they go, how many players entered the tournament, and the tournament's buy-in. At the time of this writing, "KudelyKQ" is the all time FTOPS leader with 1516 Chips. To see the FTOPS leaderboard, visit www.FullTiltPoker.com.
FTOPS XIV
The latest edition of the FTOPS series is FTOPS XIV, which just wrapped up. Some highlights of the FTOPS XIV tournament series included:
- s00tedj0kers89 outlasting 4,693 players to win $120,000 in the opening No Limit Hold'em, $216 event.
- Jakivi beating out 5,173 players to win $222,137.99 in Event #10 - a $322 No Limit Hold'em tournament.
- Event #12, where OmadJoped beat 1,365 players to win $300,000 in the $1,060 NLH 6-max tournament.
- Event #22 - a two day NL Hold'em event with a $2,620 buy-in and $2.3 million prize pool.
- The $535 NLH Main Event, where zhivago2 beat 5,470 players to take down the $418,839.16 score.
FTOPS Qualifiers
Full Tilt makes it easy for small stakes players to qualify for big ticket FTOPS events through countless satellites and qualifiers. Players can qualify by winning a cash tournament or sit and go, or by using their Full Tilt Points to win a seat. Also, Full Tilt Poker is running an additional satellite challenge for their FTOPS players. The goal is to satellite into the same FTOPS tournament as many times as you can. Whoever wins the most entries to a specific tournament will receive an additional two entries to the tournament, and whoever comes in second will receive one additional entry to the tournament. This is a huge incentive for satellite specialists.
Qualifiers for FTOPS XV are Running Now » Win a Seat at www.FullTiltPoker.com!