FTOPS VIII Main Event; Online Poker Tourney Ends, Paying Over $15mil

The long-anticipated Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS VIII) has finally come to an end at Full Tilt Poker, the world’s second largest online poker room. When all was said and done, FTOPS VIII - originally guaranteeing $10 million throughout the 24-tournament series - paid out a whopping grand total of $15,378,400 to its combined winners.

Yesterday, the FTOPS VIII Main Event was played out, bringing about the end of Full Tilt Poker’s most lucrative online poker event. But before we get into the details of the big finale, let’s take a brief glimpse into the results of Sunday’s first tournament, Event #23.

FTOPS VIII – Event #23
The afternoon began with a $240 + $16 NL Hold’em Knockout, with 6-max re-buys and a guaranteed prize pool of $500,000, hosted by Full Tilt Pro Roland de Wolfe. The turn-out became a massive field of 3,149 players, the third largest throughout FTOPS VIII thus far, raising the guaranteed value to $629,800.

Only one of Full Tilt Poker red-tagged players finished in the enormous bubble that paid the top 348 positions. David Pham snagged a 235th place finish, collecting $346.39; enough to cover the buy-in fee and purchase a nice dinner for two – maybe even take in a movie.

The final table came down to heads-up play between “elheroe” and “Panamatony”. In the end, it was “elheroe” taking the 1st place prize of $124,020.22, along with his brand new FTOPS VIII jacket and custom gold avatar. “Panamatony” earned $78,221.16 for the second place finish.