Full Tilt Poker Review

Overview |
Interface |
Action |
Bonuses |
Support

FullTiltPoker.com Overview

Full Tilt Poker has become one of the most popular online card rooms around. Aided by the fact that they continue to welcome US players, they have some of the best traffic online for both micro stakes and high stakes. Whether you play cash or tournaments, you’re almost always certain to find something to your liking at almost any time of day.

Full Tilt is well known for their large team of professional players, including some big names such as Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Andy Bloch, John Juanda, and Clonie Gowen (to name just a few). There are several opportunities to play with these Full Tilt Pros, as they frequently play in both cash games and tournaments on the site. Some of these pros even have their own tables.

Software and Interface/Usability

Full Tilt Poker has really improved their software and interface over the last few years, and it has become one of the most pleasant places to play online today. The lobby is very user-friendly and it is easy to sort by date, game, status, buy-in, or number of players within each type of poker. There is even a handy filter that allows you add or remove certain games, and you can also choose to show or not show running games or completed games. In order to manage your funds, there is a big cashier button the right side of the lobby. Clicking the cashier button allows you to deposit, withdraw, and transfer funds. For all of your account preferences and options (including the turning on or off the four color deck, sound, animation, etc), simply click on the menus at the top of the lobby or press the ‘alt’ key on your keyboard.

There are several useful options at the poker tables themselves. Arguably the best option is that to resize your table to your liking. Whether you like your tables huge because you hate having to squint or tiny because you want to play multiple tables without overlap, it’s 100% up to you because of this great feature. To make it easier to organize, Full Tilt also has the option to tile or cascade your tables automatically. For those that don’t want to re-think and re-organize their table setups every single time they log-in, it is also possible to save a particular arrangement of tables so that the tables automatically sort themselves the way they were the last time they were played. In fact, up to 5 table arrangements can be stored in this way.

If you prefer to see yourself in the same seat every time you play at a table, you can use the preferred seating option to make this happen. There is also a time bank option which gives you more time during a hand if you have to make a very difficult decision. The amount of time that you are given in your bank is dependent on the buy-in you play – people who play higher stakes will receive more time in their banks than those at lower stakes.

Some people really enjoy changing the way their tables look while they play, so Full Tilt has plenty of ways to liven up the table’s appearance. If you don’t want a lot of distractions, you can opt for a no frills and no gimmicks view of the tables and you can turn avatars off. If you find this boring and want some color, you can choose from a variety of backgrounds for your tables and you can change the background anytime. To help you remember your opponents by sight, you can choose to turn the cartoon avatars on. There are several avatars to choose from, and each avatar has the option to change its emotion, as well (it can be normal, happy, sad, or angry). Now you can put on your happy face after winning a huge pot!

Game Types, Action, and Difficulty

Cash Games
You can almost always find your cash game of choice on Full Tilt Poker. While Hold’em (no-limit, pot-limit, and limit) is the most popular game on the site, there are many other games played at all times of day including Omaha, 7 Card Stud, Razz, and mixed games (HO, HA, HOSE, and HORSE). Full Tilt has the second largest traffic for cash games on the Internet today, with over 12,000 players during its peak hours. You’ll find games as low as $0.05/$0.10 and as high as $500/$1,000, depending on whether you’re looking for capped games (the maximum you can lose is 30bbs) or uncapped games (you can lose any amount). The highest uncapped game offered at Full Tilt is $300/$600, and Full Tilt pros can be found at these games on a regular basis playing for massive pots.

Sit-N-Go’s
On Full Tilt you can play sit-n-go’s up to $2,200+$50, making it host to some of the highest buy-in tournaments online. If you’re like most players and wanting to play lower than that, you won’t be disappointed. Those just starting out with sit-n-go’s can play as low as $1+$0.25, and those wanting to play higher have many options in the $55 to $230 range as well. You’re not stuck playing only Hold’em, either. While regular Hold’em tournaments are the most popular, you’ll find that many Omaha, Stud, Razz, and mixed sit-n-go’s run on a very regular basis. These games are offered as normal full table tournaments with regular blind increases, and they’re offered in 6-max, turbo, and heads-up variations as well.

Scheduled Tournaments
A lot of Full Tilt Poker’s huge popularity comes from the fact that they host a huge variety of great scheduled multi-table tournaments, with over $8 million in guaranteed prize pools every week. If you decide to play some poker and want to get in on the action right away, you usually aren’t waiting very long. New tournaments start several times an hour, and the buy-ins are anywhere from free (yes, there are freerolls) to $1,000+$60. Like the sit-n-go’s, scheduled tournaments are offered in all types of poker and in several different formats. There are rebuy tournaments (you can rebuy if you bust during the first hour), knockout tournaments (you collect a certain sum of money each time you knock someone out of the tournament), double stack tournaments (you start with twice as many chips as usual), satellite tournaments (winners of this tournament receive seats to tournaments of higher buy-ins), and many more. On Sundays, they host their $750,000 guaranteed tournament, which has a buy-in of $200+$16. Every last Sunday of the month, this guaranteed prize pool is increased to $1,000,000.

Aside from these regularly scheduled tournaments, Full Tilt also has a special series of tournaments every so often called the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS). These tournaments have even larger guaranteed prize pools, and players of all skill levels from all over the world come out to play these events. Be sure to have your ears perked up for the next FTOPS series because each one has been bigger and better than the last.

Player Base and Action
The benefit of continuing to accept US players and becoming one of the biggest poker sites online today is that the traffic is fantastic. There are always tens of thousands of players on Full Tilt Poker at any given time, which means that there could be upwards of 20,000 tables running depending on when you play. And because the player pool is so large, there is almost always your game of choice available no matter what time of day you play, unlike a lot of other sites online.

Of course, you are most likely to find your game of choice if you play Hold’em at lower or middle stakes. This goes for both cash games and tournaments. The games at Full Tilt are not the softest online. Many believe that several of the sites not offered to US players are much easier to play at than Full Tilt, and of the sites still available to US players, Full Tilt is still not the easiest. With some skill and good table selection, however, there is more than enough money to be made. Full Tilt may not have the easiest games on the Internet, but the consensus seems to be that it does not have the most difficult, either.