This Week That Year # 2 : When Blair Hinkle became the FTOPS Million Dollar Man

‘This Week That Year’ is an article series that will provide ‘a blast from the past’ in poker. Here we will feature some memorable events that happened in poker during a particular week in a previous year. From the smaller poker events that hardly anyone noticed to the big poker extravaganzas, we will give you a trip down poker history; week by week.

 This week we bring to you one of the biggest cashes by a player in an online poker tournament. This happened when Blair Hinkle, known for his 2008 WSOP Bracelet got a Million Dollar payout on February 20th, 2011 in the FTOPS Main Event held at Full Tilt Poker.

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It isn’t always that a seven figure is won in an online poker tournament. Even lesser incidence when the huge amount has gone to the runner-up and not the winner of the tournament. This unique feat was achieved by Blair ‘blur5f6’ Hinkle on 20^th February 2011 when he struck a three-way deal in the FTOPS XIX Main Event securing a prize money of $1.1 Million. The eventual winner of this hugely attended online poker tourney series of Full Tilt Poker was GIAMPP who was richer by approx $900,000.

2011 was an year when seven figure amounts in online poker tournaments were fairly uncommon, in fact it had happened only 11 times previously. The event was a $600 +$40 buy-in multi-entry event allowed every player to register upto 6 times. This multiple entry format ensured 14,479 players sat down for the Main Event and created a gigantic prize pool of $8,687,400.

Hinkle was no stranger to big sum tournament wins having won a WSOP Bracelet in 2008 but even he was taken aback by the huge amount that he won despite finishing runners-up. Ironically, this amount won by him was double the money he received for his bracelet win.

There was a lot of discussion after the FTOP XIX ended that Hinkle had got a very good ‘chopping’ deal. It seemed that the other players agreed to all his terms and handed him that huge pay packet. Hinkle had a commanding chip lead when the deal was struck reserving $1,145,000 for him, $830,000 for GIAMPP and Sirmad got $805,440.26. They decided to leave $65k and the final FTOPS title of the series for the winner which GIAMPP finally closed.

This Main event went down in FTOPS history and perhaps is a record still to be beaten. Post this, Black Friday happened and when Full Tilt Poker resumed operations a very months later, FTOPS did come back but this huge pay-day has still not been matched.

The final results from the FTOP XIX Main Event :

To read This Week That Year #1 Click here.