This ticket was one of the most sought after in recent times.  Full Tilt ran freeroll after freeroll for their players that allowed them to win entries into their main event for this show.  In most cases, individuals had to cash in their player points to enter the various satellites and then finish in the top couple of positions in order to get to the final event.

Now they are all seeing the fruits of their labor and by the early results, the wait was well worth it.  The first player to hit the felt has the dubious honor of going up against Phil Ivey.  With the performance that he had in the WSOP, it would have seemed as though Jonathan Nygaard would be easy work for him.  Not so fast, Nygaard pulled a huge upset and managed to get Ivey on with a weak Ace.  The board blanked and Nygaard decided to walk with the $40k instead of risking it.

The next player, Topel, has a bit more gamble in him.  His first round draw was not much better than Nygaard’s in that he drew Erick Lindgren.  Once again though, the pro came up short and he actually made fairly quick work of him.  The $40k payday was not enough for him though and he drew another card and when the door opened up, Howard Lederer was standing behind it.

While Lederer is far from a slouch, he has not exactly been tearing up the poker tables lately and that trend would continue as Topel managed to get just about every chip in plan in the middle of the table pre-flop with KK against Lederer’s AQ.  The flop gave Lederer an inside straight draw, but one of the last two kings never hit the felt and Lederer was left with virtually no chips at all.

For his victory, Topel was given the option of taking down a payday of $200,000, about 5 times his annual salary, or risk walking away with nothing and go for the $1,000,000 match.  He put the $200,000 back in the vault and will now risk it all against an as of yet unknown player on August 8th.  Half of you wants to smack him upside his head and the other half wants to pat him on his back and wish him the best.

This show is even further proof that ‘amateur’s are on a much even par with pro’s than people think. While you would expect a player to get lucky every now and again, to have 3 consecutive pro’s fall to amateurs in consecutive matches was probably not part of the game plan for Full Tilt.  Not only that, but it also does some damage to the idea that poker is a game of skill.  There simply is not another ‘sport’ that an amateur can have such success against a professional time and again.