FTOPS Main Event

I was pumped and ready to go for the FTOPS Main Event on Sunday. I played super tight and finished in 402nd place for a $915 prize.

I had qualified for the event through a satellite the night before on my fourth or fifth try, at a total expense of about $250. So I got into the $535 event for less than half price, and I'm now convinced that satellites are the best way to go. I don't know why I was so skeptical of satellites in the past, but they really are filled with some of the biggest gamblers and worst overall players.

After playing this tournament, I find that I really agree with Blinders thinking that tight play gets paid off in MTTs. Sure, it's nice to open up your game a bit when you have a big stack or the blinds are low. But in general, most of the time I couldn't afford to be messing around with many middle-of-the-road type hands unless I was pulling off a steal or squeeze play.

And let me tell you, it's those steals and squeeze plays that kept me alive and made me the money. I only won one hand at showdown for the first four hours of the tournament, and yet I was still able to survive with a playable stack. It's all thanks to steals and resteals. I was very conservative and didn't try them unless I thought I had a high probability of success. I wish I had the balls to make more steals, but the ones I did worked often enough that I only had to pull them off every once in a while. Really, one steal every few rounds worked wonders.

Overall, I saw about 14 percent of flops this tournament, and my table average was usually around 18 percent. Almost everyone was playing tight, and the biggest donks went out fast.

For the first few hours, my biggest hand was KJs when I hit top pair on the flop, bet it out, got called, and then check-raised all in when I picked up a flush draw on the turn.

Then I waited and waited and waited, with some steals thrown in. Thankfully, the bubble passed very quickly. People were busting out all over the place.

At one point I got very short stacked and had to push with A3o from MP. Everyone folded. Then I picked up AK and pushed again from UTG+1. Everyone folded. Then I was dealt AK again!, and even though I was healthy this time, I thought there was a much higher probability of getting an all-in called, so I pushed all-in a third time. Everyone folded. That was fine with me because those blinds alone tripled my stack in three hands.

The biggest hand of the tourney came when an early position player who seemed a little weak and would minraise a lot of hands came in for another minraise. I had him well covered with an M around 7 or 8 or 9, so I pushed all in when I saw AQ. He thought for a while and showed AJ. I was in great shape until he pulled out a backdoor flush on the river. Yarg!

In another big hand (I'm a little fuzzy on whether it happened before or after the previous one), I called two all ins ahead of me when I was shortstacked with AK. The flop hit me, and I tripled up.

But I never recovered from that AQ vs. AJ hand. It wasn't long before I pushed J8o and got called by the big blind. I couldn't suck out a gutshot on the river and I was done.

I was happy with my play though, and it was a great event. I loved the 5,000 chip starting stacks in what was the largest tournament in Full Tilt history, paying out nearly $400,000 to first place with a prize pool of around $2.3 million. I would have liked to have played looser, but I felt like I really had to pick my spots well. Next time, I'm going to donk it up a bit more in the early game. If anything, I got too much respect, if that's possible.

Congrats to cmitch and lucko, who played great tourneys and also made the money.