"If You Have 10-15 BB, Don't Think It's Over"
Last month, the FTOPS Main Event on Full Tilt Pokerattracted a field of 2,160 entrants and had a prize pool that nearly topped $1.2 million. Your winner: PocketFiver Mustapha Kanit (pictured), who is known as lasagnaaammm.
“I’m feeling really good,” Kanit told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “I always go deep in the FTOPS Main Event too. I have gotten to the last four tables three times in the last few years. I love the structure and it has a good field.” A chop was briefly discussed, but Kanit asked for more than ICM heads-up and Full Tilt player dunphiturned it down. Instead, the pair played on and Kanit banked $239,000 for the win.
There were five PocketFives members at the final table of the FTOPS Main Event. “Shanks played really well and was the best one at the final table. I got lucky against him and he played really well. It was a good final table with a lot of good players,” he told us of the final nine. Shanks ultimately came in third place for a healthy $113,000.
Kanit will use a portion of his winnings for EPT Monte Carlo and the PokerStars SCOOP. He’s historically done well in larger tournament series, as his three largest tracked scores to date have been a $392,000 haul in a WCOOP High Roller, a SCOOP win for $376,000, and his FTOPS Main Event jersey. In fact, his five largest scores are all from tournament series and total almost $1.5 million collectively.
“I love to play the big series,” Kanit said. “They are amazing. It’s a really nice challenge and you have to be focused for 20 days playing against the best. It’s the time I enjoy the most during the year and there is a lot of action and big fields. I’m always in the right mode before a big online series because I know it’s the right time to play my best and enjoy some online MTTs.”
Kanit, who has almost $3 million in tracked scores, doesn’t have a set schedule when he enters a session. Instead, he adapts: “I like to be really focused when I get deep in something, so Kanit plays as potta_x_potta on Full Tilt and can be found at #90 worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings after peaking at #9 last year. He is ranked #35 on GPI.
Did we mention Kanit has $2.6 million in live cashes, according to the Hendon Mob? He does. Kanit won the IPT Nova Gorica Main Event four years ago for $276,000 and followed that up later that year with a final table at the Partouche Poker Tour’s stop in Cannes for $259,000. His largest live score to date came with a fourth place finish in a PCA High Roller Event in 2014 for almost a half-million dollars. He has seven live scores of over $100,000.
We’ll end this article with some words of advice from Kanit, who said, “Play focused, study your opponents, and see against whom you can take some marginal spots and against whom it is better to back away. Being short in a tournament is normal, so if you have 10 to 15 big blinds, don’t think it’s over, but keep playing your best. Eat good food and read too!”
Congrats to Kanit on his big FTOPS Main Event win!
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