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FTOPS XVI Event #17 kicked off Wednesday with a $216 Cashout NL Holdem tournament. 1491 players took part in the event with only 72 players finishing in the money. The reason behind the small number of money finishers is due to the cashout nature of the event. There were two prize pools. The first was a cashout prize pool of $149,100 and the other was the standard prize pool of $150,000. Players that chose to cashout of the event received $10 for each 500 in their stack.

The contingent of Full Tilt Poker red poker pros was somewhat light for this event with only 14 pros playing in the event. Unfortunately, none of the red pros managed a standard cash in this event, but Jon Turner finished highest in 90th place. (Final standings do not reflect whether a player chooses to cash out or not.)

Danny “THE__D__RY” Ryan and JC “PrtyPsux” Alvarado both made the final table of this event. The other players included crazylarry1, dUT73, 1NEVAK6, Lee Chang, PokerBabe31, KvicKiller, and Marinersheep.

We missed the early action of the final table, but crazylarry1 finished in 9th for $2,700. A while later, it was Danny Ryan that hit the rail in 7th place. Ryan raised to 50,500 in the small blind and JC Alvarado re-raised to 150,000. Ryan then decided to ship his stack all-in for just over 1 Million chips. Alvarado made the call and had Ryan covered by 73k. Ryan found himself dominated with A-J vs. A-K. The board fell ace high, but failed to drop a jack for Ryan. As such, he found himself eliminated in 8th place.

The very next hand, Marinersheep moved all-in from the hi-jack for 451,594. PokerBabe31 was in the cutoff and called. She actually only had 354,284 and was the one now at risk. Everyone else folded and it was a straight race with Marinersheep holding pocket fours against the A-K of PokerBabe31. The flop brought her a straight draw, but the board bricked out and PokerBabe31 was out in 7th.

Four hands later, Lee Chang decided to ship his last 418,680 from the button with pocket fours. This time, Marinersheep woke up with queens and called. The flop missed both, but a queen on the river left Chang drawing dead and out in 6th.

Two hands later, KvicKiller moved all-in from the button for 348,820 with A-9. 1NEVAK6 called from the big blind with Kd-10d. The flop fell K-Q-J, giving 1NEVAK6 the lead and both a broadway draw. The turn and river fell blanks and we were down to just four.

At this point, dUT73 and 1NEVAK6 both wanted to talk deal but chip leader JC Alvarado wouldn’t entertain even looking at the numbers. As such, play continued. Play went 18 more hands before loosing dUT73 in 4th. He raised pre-flop to 157k and 1NEVAK6 saw the flop of 9c-6s-Jd with him. DUT73 bet out 245,555 and was called. The turn fell the 6h and dUT73 moved all-in for 429,029. 1NEVAK6 made the call and turned over pocket tens. DUT73 held only pocket fives and was drawing to two outs. The river fell the 7d and we were down to three.

At this point 1NEVAK6 held the chip lead and again asked if Alvarado wanted to deal. He again said no. You have to admire someone that will stick to their guns regardless of chip stack. Three handed play between Alvarado, Marinersheep and 1NEVAK6 went on for quite a while. JC Alvarado slowly took over the chip lead and took a stranglehold on the lead when he knocked out 1NEVAK6 in 3rd. Alvarado raised from the button to 68k and 1NEVAK6 re-raised to 190k. Alvarado then shoved for 2.8 Million and 1NEVAK6 called for 1.3 Million total. The two were racing as 1NEVA6 held jacks against the A-K of Alvarado. The flop quickly put Alvarado in the lead when it fell Kc-7c-6c. Neither held a club and Alvarado was in the lead. A king on the turn left 1NEVAK6 needing a jack to survive and double up. The river fell the 10c and we were heads-up.

Heads-up play started with JC Alvarado holding a 4.24 Million to 1.85 Million chip lead. Heads-up play lasted 104 hands and both players held the chip lead at one point or another. However, Alvarado held the chip lead most of the match. The final hand of the event was an explosive one. Alvarado was in the lead 3.7 Million to 2.3 Million at the start. Marinersheep raised to 100k fro the button and Alvarado then re-raised to 289,999. Marinersheep then decided to move all-in for his entire 2.3 Million and Alvarado called! Again we had a race with Marinersheep in the lead with pocket tens against the A-J of JC Alvarado. A jack on the flop put Alvarado in the lead. The turn fell the 5s and was one of the worst cards Marinersheep could have hoped for. Three spades were on board and Alvarado held the As. Only the 10h could double-up Marinersheep at this point. He was 45 to 1 against hitting his hand. A miracle did not occur for Marinersheep as the river fell the 2s to complete Alvarado’s flush and JC Alvarado is FTOPS Event #17 Champion.

JC Alvarado took down $36,000 for this victory. More importantly, he wins the FTOPS gold jersey for winning the event. Alvarado proved in the end that he didn’t need to chop the prize pool. Congratulations to JC Alvarado, FTOPS Event #17 Champion.

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Pokertube.com just did three interviews recently with some power players from the high stakes scene and poker industry. The first one is with Patrik Antonius of Full Tilt Poker.
Patrik compliments his nemesis Ziigmund for his play, yet criticizes his poker etiquette. He goes on to say how Ziigmund always beats him no matter what.

He also mentions Viktor Blom screen name isildur1. Patrik had epic wins VS Isildur1 and claims Isildur1 is an exceptional player, with big possibilities but needs more refining. He disses Harrahs and says that they don’t care about poker players etc etc.

Patrik went on to talk about online poker pros in mid stakes and how they complain the games are hard. He said that hes watched the mid stake games and the players have flaws and that they really don’t know what they are talking about.

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Disclaimer: The following does not reflect the opinions of PokerBloggs.com.

Haley Hintze, former Editor-in-Chief of PokerNews.com, has been running a series of blogs related to the UltimateBet (now UB.com) cheating scandal. Saturday, she decided to shift her focus away from the UltimateBet scandal and provided her user with what she called evidence that Scott Tom, former head of Absolute Poker, was indeed the person responsible for the cheating scandal involving PotRipper.

She starts off the blog rehashing the whole Absolute Cheating scandal and stating that she has been among the many entities that Scott Tom has threatened with libel suits due to speaking out against him and AP. She has obtained what she considers evidence that proves that Scott Tom may indeed be the force behind the AP scandal and the other involved players may have been pawns in his game.

She starts by providing information from the anti-fraud software “ieSnare” that AP purchased from UltimateBet. She shows the information for account PotChopper that clearly points to Scott Tom as the owner.

Next, she explains how that the software assigns an ID to each new computer that logged onto AP. Tom’s primary computer was assigned “11451887.” Using this ID, the software can show where the account was logged on at. It showed that two unique machines logged onto the site from various location, but always the same two computers.

Next, she stated that his pc’s ID was linked to several of the known cheating accounts, including PotRipper, the account that brought the cheating scandal to the forefront. If you look at the image following, you will see that the device and NUID sets match those for logins from PotChopper.

Next, she produced an image of what she said was the “Graycat” account that was also involved in the cheating scandal. As you can see from the image, the ID and NUID again matches other accounts. She also provided the same information for the “Doubledrag” account.

Hintze then goes on to claim that Scott Tom was indeed behind the computer and using these accounts and not being “hacked” as he had claimed. She then produced evidence of several large deposits and a substantial withdrawal from Scott Tom’s account. Notice that he received a transfer for $70,000 from Double Drag and the account was immediately black listed. However, the account was then cleared within less than two hours and according to Hintze, this was based on directives from upper management which she stated was Scott Tom and others.

After winning a huge tourney on September 13th, 2007, Hintze indicated that Tom chip dumped a large portion of his “winnings” to other cheater accounts. After making the $70,000 withdrawal, she claims he then blacklisted the account. She states that the same was done to other accounts so that the majority of money was taken off the site.

Hintze then points out that the cheating accounts were flagged so that customer service would not close the account. She provided an image that shows the PotRipper account with the comment “Please do not close this account for any reason. Issues please consult with Brent, Adrian or Nolan.” Most of the pertinent information has been removed but she believes that the information was a “college buddy” he was using to launder money.

The allegations made by Hintze have not been proven by any other source as of the time of the writing of this article. Hintze did not reveal her sources. Should this prove to be true, it would raise a new set of questions and confirm the beliefs of many conspiracy theorists that, like Hintze, believed that Scott Tom was the head of the AP cheating scandal all along. Hintze says that she has more to publish on this matter at a future date so this isn’t the last that we will hear on this story.

- James Guill

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Patrik Antonius, Gus Hansen, and Brian Townsend are all common names when discussing the highest online games in the world, and this game is no different. The three of them sat down at one of Full Tilt Poker’s 7-Game tables with $1500/$3000 limits to battle it out. Right into action, which is no surprise to anyone familiar with these three.

The first pot was a big one. Patrik Antonus took all of Gus Hansen’s chips with a scoop in this Stud H/L hand.

Hansen dropped another pot to Antonius here, who won a pot worth over $20,000 with a pair of sevens.

Hansen won some back here, getting all the money in on the turn. His straight held, and won a pot of $50,000 from Brian Townsend.

Gus used a raise in this Omaha H/L pot to take a hand from Patrik Antonius for over $20,000.

The nuts were good enough for Patrik here. A flush was worth $30,000 in this hand.

A flush was once again good enough for Antonius. This Stud hand won him over $40,000 from Hansen.

Gus used a big bet in the No Limit Hold’Em round to take this hand off Townsend.

Antonius continued his winning ways in this next pot. After flopping the nut flush, two pair turned out to be the best hand, winning Antonius over $35,000.

Townsend took a hand off Hansen here. After turning the flush, Townsend made a big river bet. After a long tank from Gus, the call was made in a losing effort.

The final hand of the session went to Hansen, with a pair on the river.

On the day, Patrik Antonius once again found himself on the winning end of things, booking a win of over $100,000, taking most the money from the session’s loser, Gus Hansen.

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