FTOPS – Full Tilt Online Poker Series

The Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) promotion 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 $2,100. Each FTOPS concludes with a No-Limit Hold’em Main Event with a buy-in of $635.

FTOPS Leaderboard

There is an 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 Full Tilt Poker 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. Full Tilt Poker 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 sports at least a $1 million guarantee.

Although the majority of FTOPS events are good old fashioned No-Limit Hold’em, more offbeat formats such as HORSE and Omaha Hi/Lo have been a part of the series from the beginning. As Full Tilt has added games 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, with current schedules reaching 40 events.

Mini FTOPS

Mini FTOPS is a small-stakes series which gives beginners and low-rollers the chance to experience the thrill of highly competitive tournaments and huge prize pools. Each tournament in Mini FTOPS is exactly 1/10th the buy-in of a corresponding tournament in the standard FTOPS. 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.