Full Tilt Poker Review
Updated – Full Tilt Poker does not take US players. We have a complete and up to date list of poker sites accepting US players here.
I have played at Full Tilt Poker a lot over the past few years and have called it home since Party Poker left the U.S. Market in October 2006. The game selection, player volume, and highly customizable and user-friendly interface make Full Tilt my personal favorite.
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Year Established: |
2004 |
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Network: |
Full Tilt Poker (independent) |
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Peak Traffic (Peak Cash Players): |
82,000+ (10,200+ ) |
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U.S. Players Allowed? |
No |
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Multi-tabling: |
16 tables (resizable) |
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Bonus: |
100% Initial Deposit Bonus up to $600 |
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Minimum Deposit Amount: |
$45 |
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Minimum Deposit Options: |
ePassporte: $45, Mastercard: $50, Click2Pay: $50, Neteller: $50, MyWebATM: $50, Visa: $50, CashTransfer: $250 |
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No Limit Ring Stakes: |
$0.05 – $0.10 up to $500 – $1000 |
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Limit Ring Stakes: |
$0.25 – $0.50 up to $1000 – $2000 |
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Sit & Go Stakes: |
$1 + $0.25 up to $2200 + $90 |
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Player Rewards: |
Yes |
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Cons: |
The software is very rich and detailed, which can slow down the responsiveness some. Customer support is hit or miss and can be slow to respond to emails. |
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Pros: |
Full Tilt Poker still accepts U.S. Customers! A simple to use, attractive interface with customizable player avatars; each can show four emotions. Has become one of the 3 biggest poker rooms today. Many rich options make for a fulfilling experience. You can play with many of the biggest pros. |
USE Full Tilt REFERRAL CODE: HREVIEW
FullTiltPoker.net Review
FullTiltPoker.net is one of the biggest free online poker rooms on the internet. There are over 40,000 play money players competing at any given time. You get free chips and can play from 1 – 2 all the way up to 25k – 50k with players sitting with millions of play chips! FullTiltPoker.net also runs tons of free tournaments. There are always at least a couple hundred sit & go single table tournaments running and the buy-ins for these sit & go’s range from 250 up to 500,000 play chips.
Multi-table tournaments are also very popular and are offered in a variety of poker games and formats, including Holdem, Omaha, Stud, Razz, HORSE and many others. Several tournaments start every hour, so it is very easy to jump on FullTiltPoker.net and play a tournament whenever you want. Another exciting option Full Tilt has is their freeroll tournaments. FullTiltPoker.net runs many freerolls (free tournaments) every day with a variety of cash and gifts prizes for finishing at the top. They offer cash prizes, chances to play on the TV show Poker After Dark and major tournament entries like the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour. These are all available for winning free poker tournaments on FullTiltPoker.net. Some of these tournaments require Full Tilt Points (see below), but most either cost some play chips or are completely free to enter.
Join Full Tilt Poker now to play for free.
FullTiltPoker.com Review
Full Tilt Poker opened its doors in 2004 and featured many of poker’s top pros as spokespersons. Full Tilt’s motto is “Chat with the Pros – Play with the Pros – Learn from the Pros.” Many of poker’s biggest stars play online at Full Tilt Poker including Phil Ivey, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, John Juanda, Eric Seidel, Eric Lindgren, Phil Gordon, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman and dozens more. There are way too many to list here. I have personally played with many of the pros at Full Tilt and even beat WSOP Champ Huck Seed once in a heads-up sit & go! [end brag] Full Tilt Poker is a stand-alone poker room meaning that it does not share a poker network with any other poker rooms. With their herd of top-name pros and aggressive advertising, they have grown from nothing in 2004 to one of the three biggest poker rooms in the world today.
Full Tilt offers a variety of poker games and is the best poker room for pot-limit omaha and stud poker. Full Tilt features Holdem, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo, Razz and a variety of mixed games HO, HA, HOSE, and HORSE. With over 13,000 tables running at peak times, you will always be able to find the game of your choice at Full Tilt Poker, no matter how obscure.
An interesting game that Full Tilt has is capped no-limit holdem games. These ring games have the same buy-in and structure as normal no-limit games, however the most you can lose in any given hand is 30 big blinds. I haven’t really played these games, but I would imagine that if you can employ a good short-stack strategy you could make some good money. The bit I have played the cap games, the players seem very loose and bad, meaning good for you.
To attract many of the top pros, Full Tilt Poker offers the highest stakes on the internet. While the biggest games you can normally find at other poker rooms are $50 – $100 no-limit, Full Tilt Poker offers no-limit games as high as $500 – $1000! This is the newly introduced “Ivey Deathmatch” table, which is reserved for Phil Ivey and the foe of his choice. There are games running regularly at $200 – $400 and $300 – $600 no-limit and $1000 – $2000 limit holdem. I have a fun time just watching these insane stakes. I have seen $250,000+ pots! This is reason alone to download Full Tilt Poker, even if you don’t set up an account!
Click here to play at Full Tilt Poker.
Full Tilt Poker Single-Table Tournaments
One of my favorite parts of Full Tilt Poker is the Sit & Go one-table tournaments. There are hundreds running at any given time at stakes of $1 + $0.25 up to $5000 + $200. Single-table tournaments fun consistently up to $330 + $20, but stakes above these hardly ever run. Full Tilt Poker offers six man and 9 man tournaments as well as heads up sit and go’s in no-limit and limit holdem, Omaha and omaha Hi/Lo, Stud and Stud Hi/Lo as well as HORSE and Razz. Full Tilt has a Tournament Leaderboard where the top 100 high stakes ($24 + $2 and above) and low stakes Sit & Go players can earn up to 20x their normal buy-in every month. So if you normally play $50 + $5 tournaments, you could win $1000 per month (20 x $50 = $1000) if you top the leaderboard! There are truly lots of reasons to play at Full Tilt if you are a Sit & Go player.
Full Tilt Poker Multi-Table Tournaments
If you enjoy playing multi-table tournaments, Full Tilt is perfect for you. Hundreds of tournaments run every day at Full Tilt Poker at a pace of 20 to 50 per hour. This is nearly one tournament starting every minute! There is over $5 million in guaranteed prize pools every week alone, but if I had to guess, I’d say at least $25 million is won on Full Tilt every week! The buy-ins range from freerolls to $1 up to $1000. Some of their most popular tournaments are $6,000 guaranteed ($3 + $.30 rebuy which gets 500+ players), $8,000 guaranteed ($10 + $2 buyin, usually over 1200 entries), $24,000 guaranteed ($24 + $2 buyin, usually 1000+ players), and the $60,000 guaranteed ($100 + $9 buyin, 500+ players). Also, the largest of their tournaments is the Sunday $750,000 guaranteed ($200 + $16) which is one of the largest tournaments held online (the last Sunday of the month is $1,000,000 guaranteed!) There is also the $1000 tournament every Monday that has a $150,000 guarantee. That tournament usually has over 300 people buy in and the top prize is $80,000 plus.
Full Tilt is constantly running smaller satellite tournaments where you can win entries into these monster tournaments, so if you only have a little money, you can still play with the big boys. Full Tilt Poker runs an annual FTOPS (Full Tilt Online Poker Series) tournament series with astronomical prize pools. Last year’s FTOPS consisted of 14 tournaments and players won over $10.5 million! The FTOPS has been getting bigger every year and is one of the premier online tournament series in the world.
Join Full Tilt Poker to start playing tournaments today!
Full Tilt Poker Lobby Screenshot
Full Tilt Poker Table Screenshot
Software Interface & Usability
The Full Tilt Poker lobby is pretty user friendly. I like the easy on the eyes blue and gray color scheme compared to other popular rooms (C’mon Party Poker, yellow, green, and purple??) It is not too cluttered and they make it easy to find your game of choice. They implement a filtering system to narrow down each cash game to high, medium, and low limit sections. Unfortunately, their cash game filtering is not as good as the tournament filter, which lets you break it down to only show the specific limit that you want.
The Full Tilt game tables is where their software really shines. They give you the option to choose from a “racetrack view” table shape or a circular table with or without customizable avatars. (I play as a fish.) You can set your avatar to show one of four emotions (happy, sad, angry, confused) to reflect how you are feeling at the moment. They really are very cute…lol. Furthermore, you have the ability to save a layout if you find one that suits you particularly well. Another more recent addition is a “time bank.” This is great if you need extra time to make a tough decision. You have a “bank” of extra time that you can tap into if you need extra time to think about a tough decision.
Full Tilt Poker Table View Options
Full Tilt Poker Player Rewards
When you play for real money you earn Full Tilt Points which you can use like a currency to redeem for many prizes. You earn them while playing in cash games or tournaments.
Here is the policy from FullTiltPoker.com:
“We offer you one point for every dollar in rake that is dropped, including fractional points. Most sites limit you to a maximum of one point for every hand; we let you earn up to 3 points per hand. You can also earn points playing in tournaments and Sit & Go’s. Earn 7 points for every $1 in entry fees, with no limit to the number of points you can earn per tournament.”
These points can be redeemed for tournament entries with cash prizes, or merchandise from the Full Tilt Poker Store. It is one of the best player rewards store online featuring big screen plasma tv’s, laptops, computer monitors, ipods, poker books, dvds, FTP branded clothes, custom Full Tilt Poker jerseys with your name on them (I’m sure you’ve seen these on televised poker tournaments), and a bunch more stuff they are adding all the time.
To start earning Full Tilt Points today, sign up here.
Licensing and Security From FullTiltPoker.com
Banking and Transaction Processing – Real Money Full Tilt Poker conducts their banking and financial affairs in accordance with generally accepted standards of internationally recognized banking institutions. Full Tilt Poker follows and adheres to applicable laws pertaining to transaction reporting and anti-money laundering laws and regulations.
Prize Payouts – Real Money Full Tilt Poker does ensure that there is adequate financing available to pay all current obligations and that working capital is adequate to finance ongoing operations. Full Tilt Poker does pay winnings and account balances promptly upon reasonable demand.
Security – Real Money Section Full Tilt Poker Inc. uses 128-bit SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, and also does everything possible to protect user-information off-line. All users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, a billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. ALL employees are kept up-to-date on security and privacy practices. Every quarter, as well as any time new policies are added, employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance Full Tilt Poker places on privacy, and what they can do to ensure that user and member information is protected. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment, behind a locked cage. For additional information, please refer to the Privacy Agreement on this site.
Full Tilt Poker Hand History
There is a very easy to use graphical “last hand” feature that you can use while you are playing. Did you forget what happened a couple of hands ago or did you not see which hand your opponent showed down last hand? Simply click “last hand” in the top left corner and you can review the last 50 hands played at the table. You also have the option to automatically save your hand histories to your hard drive, so integration with Poker Tracker is a snap.
Ease of Multi-tabling
Full Tilt allows players to play up to 16 tables at once. Tip: By default, you may only play 8 tables at once, but email them and request how many you wish to play and they will modify your account so you can play up to 16. Another very welcome function for all you multi-tablers is the ability to resize a table. You can click and drag the table to any size you prefer.
Example of Resizing a Full Tilt Table
You can maximize it to fill up your entire screen if you are playing one table or make them smaller so you can fit more on your screen if you are playing several. (I usually play 8-12 tables at a time, so this is my MVP option.)
Full Tilt Poker Room Action
Full Tilt is one of a dwindling number of online poker rooms that still accepts US players. After President Bush signed the Safe Port Act on Oct. 13th, 2006, many online poker rooms shut their doors to Americans, but Full Tilt Poker has remained adamant that they will stay in the US market and continue to fight for American to play. They have made it very clear that they Americans will always have a home at Full Tilt Poker. Traffic at Full Tilt has been steadily on the rise since they launched in 2004 and now at peak times there are more that 60,000 players. Regardless of the stakes or game that you prefer, there is literally always a game going that is perfect for you.
Ease of Competition
I’d like to say that the competition at Full Till Poker is really easy or that it is harder than normal, but the fact is that except for a few smaller poker rooms, the level of competition is pretty much similar at all the big poker rooms that still accept Americans. At this point in time, I believe that you should not worry about how many fish are at a particular poker room, but how the poker room treats you, if you prefer the interface, the amount of traffic, how reputable the company is, and their player rewards program. In all of these areas, Full Tilt excels.
If you have made it this far, then you might as well join me and go sign up at FullTiltPoker.com.
