“CrazyZachary” Wins FTOPS V Main Event

The Full Tilt Online Poker Series V came to a close with the $500 buy-in, $2 million guaranteed prize pool no-limit hold’em main event.  With 4,578 entrants, the prize pool pushed to almost $2.3 million, for a first prize of $396,000. 

At 50,000/100,000, the blinds were relatively high compared to the chip stacks at the start of the final table.  Stacks ranged from 1.1 million up to 4.6 million, so not many players could sit too comfortably.   

shubbawubba, the shortest stack, went out first when rppkoz sucked out on him with Q-10 versus A-K.  The next shortest stack, kiwid10, was the next to go, failing to improve his K-10 against internet pro Clayton_27’s pocket Jacks. 

While a Queen was rppkoz’s magic card earlier, it did him in later, as he got a taste of his own medicine.  All-in with A-A, Clayton_27 called him with Q-Q and caught a set to take rppkoz out in 7^th place.   

Pocket Queens was the big hand in the next elimination, when MFjimmyLOWRY nailed jbaggs and his pocket Jacks. 

Two bluffs were the catalyst for the next two eliminations.  First, pokerskibum tried to steal the blinds with only 8-10, pushing in all of his chips pre-flop, but he got called by Clayton, who had him dominated with A-10.  Then MFjimmyLOWRY tried to go over the top of CrazyZachary’s raise, but found that his 8-9 was no match for A-K. 

Going into three-handed play, chardrian had the lead with 9.9 million chips.  CrazyZachary, who incidentally was rumored to be Barry Greenstein because of some railbird comments by Mike Matusow (this was later debunked), was second with 8.7 million, and Clayton_27 brought up the rear with only 4.1 million.  Clayton was able to double through Zachary, though, who in turn doubled through chadrian, and the standings were flipped.  

Now looking at the shortest stack of the bunch, chadrian pushed all-in pre-flop with A-9, but was unlucky to run into Clayton’s A-J and ended up going out in 3^rd place. 

Starting heads-up, Clayton_27 had a 13 million to 9.8 million chip lead on CrazyZachary.  The turning point came when Clayton moved all-in pre-flop with pocket Sevens and was in a race against Zachary’s A-Q.  The A-Q won and Clayton was down to 4.4 million. 

It was that pesky A-9 that ended the match.  All-in with that hand, which is a very nice hand heads-up, Clayton_27 found himself face to face with CrazyZachary’s Q-Q.  When a Queen flopped, that was all she wrote for Clayton and CrazyZachary was the FTOPS V champion. 

Final Table Standings 

1. CrazyZachary -- $395,905
2. Clayton_27 -- $240,345
3. chardrian -- $155,652
4. MFjimmyLOWRY -- $121,317
5. pokerskibum -- $91,560
6. jbaggs -- $68,670
7. rppkoz -- $52,647
8. kiwid10 -- $40,057
9. chubbawubba -- $29,757