February 23 2011, Rich Ryan

Sorel Mizzi six-tabled the FTOPS XIX Main Event Sunday, but he wasn’t breaking any rules. Thanks to Full Tilt Poker’s new Multi-Entry feature, hundreds of players had six entries ballooning the field to 14,479 and the prize pool to a mind-boggling $8,687,400.

GIAMPP, Blair “blur5f6″ Hinkle and Mads “SirMad” Amot chopped three ways at the final table. Hinkle took the lion’s share of $1,162,949, but GIAMPP won the jersey and $877,949.

The Main Event wasn’t the first tournament affected by multiple entries either. FTOPS Event #24 had 11,343 entrants, creating a prize pool of $3,402,900. Alexander “AD_84” Debus ($341,268), Jason “NovaSky” Koon ($458,550) and O0Brian0O ($336,750) chopped three-handed

Before FTOPS XIX, during Double Guarantees Week, the Full Tilt $1K Monday attracted 1,454 entrants. The $1,454,000 prize pool more than doubled the $600,000 guarantee and Shaun Deeb took it down, banking $312,610.

All of this is very exciting, but much like alcohol, multi-entry tournaments should be enjoyed in moderation. They’re like that friend who always drinks too much and wakes up the next morning vowing to never drink again. Every once in a while you get a kick when they do something fascinating, but after time they become more excessive than Norman Chad’s divorce jokes.

If every major tournament on FTP becomes a multi-entry affair, then the fields will become over-saturated and less attractive to amateur players and mid-stake grinders alike. If an amateur player opens a tournament lobby to see that there are hundreds of sharks with six entries and they can only afford one, why would they register? Likewise, mid-stakes grinders understand the dangers of variance and would rather play on other sites or at smaller stakes than bust multiple times in one tournament.

“I’m sure I’m not the only one that these multi entries have taken broke on FTP,” Josh Brikis tweeted Sunday. “Won’t be reloading for a while either.”

Established pro’s and regulars will suffer if amateur players practice avoidance. They’re already spending more buy-ins and paying more juice to play multi-entry tournaments, so if the fields become tougher they are going to become very unappealing. There are some players like Deeb who believe they have an edge over anyone they play online, but as we’ve seen with the high stakes cash games there are plenty of players who are a bit nitty when it comes to game selection. Players certainly can’t bum hunt when playing multi-table tournaments, but they can steer clear of multi-entry tournaments altogether.

For those who play multi-entry tournaments, there are also problems when it comes to screen space. If you’re playing a full Sunday schedule and all of a sudden one or more of the tournaments has multi-entries, then you may have to add three or more tables per tournament. To complicate matters further, this screenshot from the FTP website depicts a tournament lobby with over 11 entries available – as if six wasn’t enough. To top it all off, merging stacks doesn’t necessarily benefit players who go deep. For example, if one player has the two largest stacks going into the final table they merge together, but they receive 10th place money. So rather than having a shot at having two big payouts you only get one chance to win. Of course this issue will rarely come up in large fields, but it’s definitely in play for smaller, more frequent tournaments.

Instead of spreading these tournaments like wildfire, FTP should treat them like Rush Poker. Rush revolutionized both cash games and tournaments, but the FTOPS Main Event will never be Rush nor will any other major tournament like the $1K Monday. There are a handful of preliminary FTOPS and Mini FTOPS events that are Rush, but that’s it. Instead of force-feeding multi-entry tournaments to their players, FTP should just make them available like they do with Rush. That way they can generate a huge prize pool once every couple of months without devastating players’ bankrolls.

Also, there should be special satellites designed for multi-entry tournaments. If you’re an amateur player, what’s the point of playing a satellite to a multi-entry tournament if you’re only going to win one entry? Some satellites should offer two or more seats to whomever “cashes” so they too can have multiple entries in the tournament. This would obviously halve the amount of prizes awarded, but their value would double, making it a fair trade off. The same concept could be extended to rebuy tournaments as well. Again, what’s the point of playing a satellite if you can only win one bullet?

Most all of us enjoy going out and having a few drinks with our friends, but when someone is always getting sloppy we tend to repel from them. The same concept applies to multi-entry tournaments. Once in a while it’s OK to spew six entries for a shot at $1.326 million, but these tournaments will get very old if players are forced to dish out multiple buy ins on a daily basis.

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February 22 2011, Dana Immanuel

The light snow drifting down over Copenhagen on Day 1a turned into a blizzard on Day 1b, making staying within the confines of the Radisson Blu hotel just that little bit more enticing. And it was a good thing, too, as 235 players either satellited, bought or begged their way into the second start day of the 2011 PokerStars European Poker Tour Copenhagen, bringing the total number of runners up to 449 — well up from last year’s 423. The field generated an impressive-sounding DKK 15,086,400 (around €2,023,500), of which DKK 3,700,000 (around €496,270) will go to the winner.

The “Scandie Open,” as it’s affectionately known, has a reputation for attracting one of the toughest fields in Europe, and this year’s tournament has not disappointed in that respect. Among the better-known faces to grace the tournament room at the start of the day were Jake Cody, Juha Helppi, both Thorson brothers and a very respectable smattering of Team PokerStars Pros including Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Vadim Markushevski, Florian Langmann, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Toni Judet, John Duthie and JP Kelly.

Viktor Blom began the day well with pocket tens making a straight to crack another player’s aces and put the Blom stack well above the average. But around halfway through the day, Blom’s stack began moving in the wrong direction, and he was at less than his starting stack when he got the whole lot in with on a flop against Ramzi Jelassi’s . The turn and river blanked, and Blom hit the rail. A by-product of Blom’s misfortune was to propel Jelassi up the leaderboard where he remained for the rest of the day, finishing up on 169,200, in third place overall.

Other players who failed to make it through the day included EPT Prague champion Roberto Romanello, two-time EPT Copenhagen finalist Rasmus Nielsen, William Thorson, Sebastian Ruthenberg and EPT Vilamoura winner Toby Lewis.

On the other hand, those still in with a shot at those tasty DKK 3.7 million first prizes include Kelly, Duthie, Cody, Jonathan Weekes, David Vamplew and Michael Tureniec.

The chip lead changed hands several times throughout the day. Online qualifier Michael Aron and Vojtech Ruzicka took turns for a while, but the biggest stack in the room at the bagging and tagging was Lithuanian Domantas Klimciauskas. Klimciauskas, whose best live result to date was fifth place in the €2,000 side event at the recent EPT Prague, goes into Day 2 with 203,800, making him the overall chip leader. Michael Aron seems to be in second place on 191,000 and Ramzi Jelassi in third. The biggest stack from Day 1a was that of Mark Hirleman, who finished up with 163,400.

The remaining 262 players from the combined Day 1s will reconvene Wednesday at noon local time in an effort to whittle themselves down to a more manageable number. We’ll be with them the whole time, documenting their progression toward the money, at PokerNews.com, so join us then.

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