Full Tilt Shootouts Suck My Ball

Instead of the nice, normal praise of everyone that I was going to post today, instead you're gonna get this.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, should EVER play a shootout on full tilt poker again.

The shootouts on full tilt are horrible. They are beyond horrible. I mean, it's one thing to have something fail because of technological reasons. Those are embarrassing as shit, and full tilt has certainly had its share of those, with the servers crashing and whatnot. But the saddest thing about the full tilt shootouts is that the errors involved are not technical in nature. They are Just. Plain. Stupid. Honestly, you would never ever believe there are actual pros behind the scenes here running this site. Although I've only ever said two words to any of the poker pros who are actually associated with full tilt, I know them enough to know that not a single one of them would support any facet of the way full tilt has structured its shootout tournaments right from the first time they became available.

Silly me to expect that after not having shootouts for like three years on their site, when they finally get them going, they're still set up like the way a blogger would likely set them up. Fucking ridiculous.

Think back to Loretta's short-lived Sunday heads-up shootout tournament. These idiots then and even still now start people in later rounds with different amounts of chips. That whole notion is so sick, no real bona fide pro would ever consider playing for any real money with that setup. It's recockulous. So on Thursday night in the "NOT FTOPS #3" tournament, which I paid $109 of my hard-earned money to enter, I started out with 3 players at my starting table, and since it was a double-stack tournament, we all started with 3000 chips. Thus, when I won my first table, I moved to my second table (after a full hour delay, yet another delicious part of these shootouts) and started there with the 9000 chips I had amassed from my first table. And yet, two of the six players at my Round 2 table started with 6000 chips.

Now I understand, and everyone has been through this before, that I had to go through an extra player in Round 1 and these 6000-chip guys only had to play through one player in their first round table. But you know what? I don't give a fuck. Start everyone with the same number of chips in Round 2 you ass puppies!! What the fliggity fluck is so hard about that? Just fucking do it! What the fuck man. In Loretta's tournament, we had people starting Round 2 in a heads-up matchup with one guy with 3000 chips and the other starting with 1500. Could anything show just how gheyly idiotic this setup is more than that? I mean, so what if twice I won Loretta's tournament after starting Round 2 with 1500 chips to my opponent's 3000, still for a mere mortal, starting off 1500-3000 in a heads-up battle is not even close to a fair deal. It's the height of folly. Period. PERIOD!! Don't try to deny it, just fucking change your shootout structure full tilt!! If anything was ever indefensible, it's that. Period. Fuckfaces.

So yeah, on Thursday night I started off in Round 2 of the $109 shootout with 9000 chips along with three other players, while two others at my table started with 6000. It's unfair and it is truly recockudonkulous. It's not even close to not being recockudonkulous. And last night I was one of the 9000-chip guys, but I'm still telling you. Full tilt oughta be embarrassed to even try to run such an event on their site, and the pros who play there and own the shit should be mortified to be associated with such a practice. Some of you guys know Howard Lederer a little bit. Do you think he thinks this is the right way to play a shooout tournament? How about Jesus Ferguson? Better yet, do you think any of these guys would put, say, $1000 of their own money into a tournament where in Round 2 there are likely to be people starting out with 50% more chips than him? If you think they would, then you are a genuine schmuck. They wouldn't even consider doing such a thing, and in fact if you told them this story and didn't let them know that it was full tilt where it happened, they would immediately advise you never to play any poker at that site because it's obviously run and owned by a bunch of schmike (plural of schmuck in hoy-speak).

But the kicker here is, this isn't even the dumbest or most redickufuck thing about the full tilt shootouts anymore, as they have apparently "upgraded" the payout structure since they first brought this format to full tilt with a software upgrade a few months back. So last night there were 500-some entrants in the 6-max $109 shootout, and it listed that it pays 108 spots. After Round 1 there were 216 players left, meaning that the top half of the remaining field would get paid out. I had already been girly chatting with a few of you out there about how stoopid that payout structure is, because it really means that at one table you could run down to heads-up quickly and then lose, and still be one of the first half of players eliminated in Round 2, and therefore not get paid. This does not seem like a fair outcome in many ways, but when you think about it, is it really any different from a regular tournament? In a regular mtt, the players at one table could all play super slow and super tight, all stall their way to the bubble, and a bunch of short stacks not only could but do cash in mtt's several thousand times every single day of the year playing in just this exact way. Most of the completely scrotumless bloggers out there have repeatedly stated that stalling is a key part of the game, and even though every single person who's ever made that point is an undeniable pussy loser, it's still something that is simply a part of tournament poker, both live and online, for as long as there's been tournaments and will be for as long as there is tournament poker going forward.

So anyways, I'm playing this thing, and I'm doing well at my Round 2 table. The number of players remaining is whittling down, whittling down towards the 108 ITM positions. 120 left, 116 left, 112 left, and my stack is still strong, sitting me probably right around the halfway mark of the remaining players. Of course then I find pocket Aces and some anusass flops a set of Jacks and depletes me down to 112th out of 112 remaining with some 600 chips. Several of you out there were on the girly with me laughing at the horridious luck I have been facing this week, but then you got treated to the greatest display of aggro-stealery in history, as I proceed over the next 15 or 20 hands or so to raise and push my way back all the way up to over 6000 chips without even being called one time. It was amazing. Along the way there the bubble bursts and we are down to 108, 105 and eventually down to under 100 players left in the tournament. So I know I'm going to cash at least, and with my still-short 6600 chips I am still playing relentlessly aggressive poker to try to double up or go home. Suddenly in the midst of my raising allin in maybe 15 of the previous 20 hands, I find pocket Queens and I know I'm in great shape with the worst possible table image. I bump it up again, knowing I will get no respect, and the guy to my left pushes allin with a larger stack than mine. I call of course, he has pocket 6s (what a play with pocket 6s btw), and natch he flops a 6 and IGH in 98th place.

Only that is when things start to get freaky. The little window pops up and informs me that I just finished in 118th place in the tournament. Conveniently, out of the money positions by some 10 places. Hmmmm. I check the lobby, and there are only 68 players remaining in the event, and yet when I check the leaderboard out, there I am showing as busted in 118th place on the list. Even though I just busted out not two seconds earlier.

Upon further inspection, the geniuses at full tilt poker have set up their shootout payouts such that the fucking thing literally shows the top 108 spots paying out, and literally shows fewer than 70 players remaining at that time (which was accurate), but apparently they are saving fucking spots lower down on the list from the number of players remaining, so that when people bust with more people left at their table, they will be slotted in as busting significantly lower than the number of people actually remaining in the tournament at the time of their bust! Sure enough, I click through to full tilt's shootout payout structure rules on their website, and there it is in black and white. So apparently everyone who busts out 3rd of in their Round 2 tournament will automatically be slotted in as being eliminated from the tournament in spots 108-144, regardless of how many people were actually left in the event at the time of your actual elimination.

Sheer fucking brilliance, huh?

So there I am, I literally watch the bubble break, and I am conrgatulated by several friends who are watching the tournament with me in the girly. I play down further, and I make decisions about how I play certain hands based on the fact that there are already far fewer people remaining alive than the number of spots being paid out. We're then well below 100 players left -- in fact as I mentioned there are only 68 players remaining at the time of my untimely bullfuck cocknshit bustout that took not one but two flopped sets against my dominating higher pocket pairs to knock me out of this thing. There are fucking 68 players remaining, and when I bust I am slotted in to spot #118th?

Nice job, full tilt.

Do not play ANY, and I repeat -- ANY -- shootout tournaments on full tilt until they fix this shit up! You would think it is fucking rocket science, figuring out how to do a shootout tournament. Either these horses' asses are limiting the number of entrants to a multiple of 2, or they're starting people with 100% or 50% more chips than other people at every table in every round after the first round in these shootouts, or better yet they are inexplicably changing things from the very same way every other tournament that has ever run works as far as being able to pussy-stall and last to the money positions. They're showing 68 runners left and the top 108 paid, and then when I bust out 68th, they decide to "route" me to having busted out in 118th place. They're showing me already in the lobby who's busted out in 69th place, and yet there are 98 players officially left in the tournament?

Sheer brilliance huh.

Can somebody please get the guy who makes all these decisions for full tilt a poker blog right away?