I won a poker tournament on Sunday in the MiniFTOPS, a tournament series that Full Tilt Poker runs as a lower-stakes counterpart to its Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS). The tournament was a 4096-player headsup shootout, a $50 buyin that required winning 12 consecutive matches to capture the title and approximately $30K.
As many people know, one of the prizes associated with the bigger FTOPS series is a gold jersey avatar that the winner gets to display during online play. Naturally I assumed MiniFTOPS winners received a silver jersey like the one featured in the promotional material for MiniFTOPS, similar to this one below:
(Graphic by Mark Ciavola)
Much to my dismay, I was informed by Full Tilt's support team that "We are sorry for the confusion, but it's just used as a logo of MiniFTOPS" and that no such avatar would be awarded. If you're on board with my sentiment, I encourage you to email
support@fulltiltpoker.com with a message saying something like: "I firmly believe that all MiniFTOPS winners are entitled toMiniFTOPS jersey avatars."
I hope my campaign for mini-equality will help avoid heartbreak and disappointment for future silver mini-jersey hopefuls, and I do envision a day when all MiniFTOPS winners past, present and future are given their rightful silver-jersey mini-avatars.
***
In early April I am hitting the road for an exciting lineup of Spring poker tournaments and traveling, and until then I am staying in a rental house in
Topanga Canyon with my good friend Owen Crowe.
We've pretty much been grinding online poker all day every day, waking up early and often playing the first satellite of the day for EPT San Remo, which runs at 9:30AM PST. We've been playing those San Remo satellites three times a day for several weeks without a win for either of us.
On Thursday morning, as I was waking up, wiping the cold out of my eyes and warming up my computer to check emails and stuff, Owen, on his way back into the house from a morning cigarette said, "there's a dead bird on the porch." I looked over and saw a little creature lying helplessly on the wooden balcony, but he appeared to be moving slightly and breathing. I said, "dude I don't think he's dead."
I went outside to check on the bird, thinking of how I was going to euthanize him, since I assumed he was badly injured and his days as a free flying bird were over. I picked him up with a paper towel while Owen observed. It was a little hummingbird, and he was indeed alive and was not visibly injured, yet he wasn't flying.
I placed him on the ledge of the porch, looked at him closely, asked him what was wrong, and when he didn't reply, I blew on him gently and gave him a pep talk, "look, you got this...go for it, you can do it." Little birdy continued to ignore me for about 10 seconds, at which point he picked himself up, said "thanks," and flew over to the nearest tree. I assume he had crashed into the window here and either gave up or got too disoriented to fly.
I went back inside, took my seat in the San Remo satellite, and ended the tournament about two hours later, winning the €7900 package by knocking out the second and third place finishers on the same hand with JJ vs A8 and A8.
Oh, little birdy.
