Full Tilt Poker - Review
Full Tilt Poker is one of the top sites that accepts U.S. players. It is one of the largest poker rooms online today and offers U.S. residents a wide choice of games and stakes.
Game Selection, Limits and Rakes
Full Tilt Poker offers the usual poker games that can be found online - Texas Hold'em, Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo. On top of that players can find Seven-Card Stud, Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo and Razz. Full Tilt POker also spreads mixed games like H.O.R.S.E. and H.O.S.E.
There is a wide range of stakes for the various games offered as well. Full Tilt is well known for having pros sit down at the big games on the site. You can often find players like Phil Ivey, Patrick Antonius, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and other sitting to play some high stakes Omaha or Texas Hold'em for hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. The lower stakes attract plenty of players as well, and you can be sure you'll find a good game at whatever level you want to play at.
In No-Limit and Pot-Limit games on Full Tilt Poker, a maximum of $1 is taken out for rake in the the low-stakes 5¢/10¢games, and at higher limits the rake is amaximum of $3. How much rake is taken out depens on the amount of people in the hand as well as what stakes are being played. Full Tilt Poker also follows a "no flop, no drop" policy for rake.
Tournaments
Full Tilt Poker may have some of the most exciting high stakes action you can find online, but it's no slouch in the tournament department either. The cream of the crop on the site is the $400,000 guaranteed tournament on Sundays and the $750,0000 guaranteed monthly tournament. The site actually hosts more than $3 million in guaranteed tournament prizes each week.
Full Tilt Poker is also home to the Full Tilt Online Poker Series which offers a series of poker tournaments all with millions of dollars in guaranteed prize pools. The FTOPS is set up every few months at Full Tilt Poker and each of the events are hosted by the poker site's top poker pros.
The poker site offers a wide array of tournaments starting at $1 buy-ins on up. There are also qualifier systems set up for many of the sites top tournaments and Full Tilt Poker has qualifiers to send players to top tournaments all around the world such as the World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour and the Aussie Millions.
Rewards
At Full Tilt Poker, playing in ring games or in tournaments can mean more than just the money you pick up from playing. Each poker hand at a cash table or every tournament played can earn you Full Tilt Points. These points can be used for other tournament entries or to purchase items from the Full Tilt Store.
The Full Tilt Poker store offers merchandice such as decks of cards and poker set to Full Tilt sport jerseys and even a car.
Other perks at the poker site include regular chat sessions with the pro players and a player forum.
Traffic
Full Tilt Poker is one of the largest poker networks online despite being an independent poker room and not sharing a network with other poker sites. It has players living all over the world, though a lot of its traffic still comes out of the United States.
Because a large part of its players are in the U.S., Full Tilt Poker sees its peak hours usually in the U.S. evening time around 7 p.m. The poker site has seen nearly 10,000 players at a time in the cash games at peak hours.
Software
Full Tilt Poker is a standalone poker room and has their own poker software. Their software was developed in-house by the Tiltware team and is regularly updated to continually give customers the best playing experience possible.
The software gives players the ability to resize tables and to change backgrounds, avatars and table view. There is the option to take notes on players and the software provides comprehensive statistics. One unique feature is that not only can a player choose their cartoon-like avatar, they can choose its emotion.
Full Tilt Poker also offers a Mac version for download.
Support
Full Tilt Poker offers e-mail support as well as a forum where you can get your questions answered. The poker site has a good response time in its support department and they can be reached at support@fulltiltpoker.com.
Pros
- Large variety of games and stakes
- Customizable avatars and table schemes
- Large stable of pro players at the site
- Software for PC or Mac
- Good mini-table function for multi-tabling
Cons
- Only offers e-mail support and help through the forums
- Low sit&go volume at times
- Doesn't offer a no-download option