FTOPS - Full Tilt Online Poker Series

The Full Tilt Online Poker Series is a tournament series that is hosted by Full Tilt Poker roughly once every three months. Each FTOPS features tournaments in several different poker formats, with buy-ins ranging from $109 to $2100. Each FTOPS concludes with a no-limit holdem main event. The buy-in to the main event has been $535 for most of the history of the FTOPS, but has recently been moved to $640.

The individual tournaments in the series are all hosted by one of the sponsored Full Tilt Pros.

FTOPS Special Prizes

Everyone who makes the final table of an FTOPS event receives a customized FTOPS jacket. These jackets are not available any other way. The winer also receives an FTOPS gold jersey and corresponding gold jersey avatar so that everyone at the tables in the future will know they are in the presence of an FTOPS winner.

There’s also an extra prize for the winner of the FTOPS leaderboard for each series, where points are awarded to each tournament’s top finishers—from 1 point for 72nd place to 200 points for 1st. At the end of the series, the player on the top of the leaderboard wins a custom FTOPS avatar and free entry into nearly every event in the next FTOPS.

FTOPS History

The first FTOPS was held in August 2006 and featured nine different events. FTP player crownnginger won the honor of being crowned the first FTOPS main event champion, and he received the lion’s share of a $734,000 prize pool for his troubles. Since then, the money involved in the FTOPS’s biggest tournament has continued to grow, and the main event currently sports a $3 million guarantee.

Although the majority of FTOPS events are good old fashioned no-limit holdem, more offbeat formats such as HORSE and Omaha Hi/Lo have been a part of the series from the beginning. And as Full Tilt has added gametypes to their software and even tinkered with the game by introducing in-house developments like cashout tournaments and rush poker, the FTOPS schedule has played along.

The FTOPS schedule has also expanded substantially since 2006, and the most recent series, FTOPS XVIII, consists of 34 different events.

Mini FTOPS

The Mini FTOPS is a small-stakes series run in parallel with the FTOPS which gives beginners and low-rollers the chance to experience the thrill of highly competitive tournaments and huge prize pools. Each tournament in the Mini FTOPS is exactly 1/10th the buy-in of a corresponding tournament in the standard FTOPS. The Mini FTOPS also has its own leaderboard challenge, and the winner is granted entry to every tournament in the next FTOPS—the next real FTOPS, not the Mini one.