One of the biggest winners of the recently completed Full Tilt Online Poker Series(FTOPS) was Mike telksTelker (pictured). The 56th player in the PocketFives.com Rankings, Telker came away with the jersey in a $1,060 No Limit Hold’em Multi-Entry event (#27) for $408,000 following a two-way deal. Upon scoring his first FTOPS jersey, he told PocketFives.com, “I was so pumped mostly because I had just won a sick FTOPS more so than because of the money.”

A total of 2,321 entries were recorded in the $1,060 buy-in poker tournament and the top 234 spots on the leaderboard paid out. Telker put in for the maximum number of entries, four, and when asked why the chop occurred, he told us, “It was pretty much because of the money at stake. Also, Kirbynator is a really solid player who has some really good results and so I thought he would put up a good fight. If it were a fish or a reg who I didn’t think was that good, I wouldn’t have chopped.” Kirbynator walked away with $371,000 and officially took second place.

On his array of tournaments that fateful night, Telker recalled, “I max entered for four in the FTOPS and just played those and a few Turbos. I didn’t want to play many other tournaments because I really wanted to focus on the $1K.” All told, he was in for over $4,000, but cashed for 100 times that amount, his largest online poker score ever.

Telker is a Triple Crownwinner on PocketFives.com whose tournament resume includes wins in the Full Tilt Poker Sunday Brawl and $1K Monday. Even though he’s coughed up heavy buy-ins before, we asked what it was like shelling out $4,000 in one tournament: “I just think of it like I’m getting four separate chances at making a run. I feel like the odds of double final tabling that kind of event are rare enough that I’m not losing much equity. Plus, it’s like I get to play a year’s worth of $1K FTOPS events in a night – what a dream.”

The final table of the $1K Multi-Entry FTOPS tournament was loaded with talent. Among those suited up for battle were Tony D1rtyR1v3rNardi and Eric whitE_mAmbA Ladny (pictured), who took fifth and sixth, respectively. On his competition at the final table, Telker admitted, “I thought they all played very well. It’s not easy to play against a big chip leader at a big final table like that, but they did a great job. I can’t count the number of times they re-shoved on me; it was pretty ridiculous. Kirbynator is just ridiculous though. He has just over 700 games on Full Tilt Poker and is up almost $1 million. That’s just absurd.”

Telker won a major pot with pocket kings against A-Q to wrestle the chip lead five-handed and never looked back. While he was busy dominating online, posters on PocketFives.com were cheering him on in Poker Discussion. On the outpouring of support, Telker remarked, “It feels good to have so many people happy for me. There is a pretty big group of regs that all talk to each other and any time someone has a huge score like that, everyone’s going to be there to congratulate them.”

Congratulations to Telker and everyone who took down FTOPS XIX titles last month. He was a recent guest on the PocketFives.com Podcastand you’d be amiss if you didn’t have a listen. Also, view our complete final table results.