Online Poker

Opening it's doors in 2004, Full Tilt Poker is the online home to some of the most respected poker players in the world. With design input from the pro players, the Full Tilt software helps make playing and learning to play online poker games a pleasurable experience.

Full Tilt's roster of 13 pro players and many more 'friends of Full Tilt' play at the site often at all limits, even play money. You can learn, chat and play with the pros at Full Tilt Poker using either a PC or Mac.

Full Tilt's promotions are usually pretty awesome. They always have a few different promotions running, often involving the chance to win live poker tournament entries. With so many pro players endorsing the site, there's always the chance to match up against the pros at the tables too.

Leading up to the World Series of Poker*, Full Tilt is running 'Main Event Mania' and giving away a guaranteed 100 seats to the $10,000 WSOP main event in Las Vegas this July. Full details of this promotion can be found at the Full Tilt Poker website.

Full Tilt is offering Poker.com visitors a very generous 100% up to $600 bonus. It is released in increments of $5 as you play and earn Full Tilt Poker points. So if you deposited $100, you would receive 20 x $5 in bonus money as you earn points for your play.

Use the exclusive Poker.com bonus code POKERDOTCOM if you make a deposit to ensure you receive the full 100%.

Full Tilt offers Texas Holdem, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo and Razz in the poker room. They also run mixed games of HORSE (Holdem, Omaha, Razz, 7 Stud, 7 Stud Hi/Lo) and HOSE where the game changes to a different poker flavor every 10 hands.

That's a good variety of games and H.O.R.S.E. is something not many sites offer, but we think they should spread at least one draw game at such a big site.

Full Tilt is a standalone poker room, meaning that they are the only brand to use their poker software. Their software was developed in-house by the Tiltware team and was upgraded in 2006 to the version in operation now. Full Tilt have done a great job of constantly improving their software and keeping everything looking very professional and easy to use.

When you play at a Full Tilt poker table, you are able to choose not just a cartoon avatar, but also it's emotion. You can be Happy, Sad, Angry or Confused. I like to use the happy Donkey... Because that's just how I roll...

Recently the software was upgraded to allow players to re-size the tables, which is a great feature. My favorite software feature at Full Tilt is the ease of finding related satellite tournaments. All tournaments are color coded and the higher buyin tournaments list which smaller satellites are available within the toutnament lobby. This makes it very easy to find & play in smaller satellites and work your way up to the big tournaments.

Last but definitely not least, Full Tilt offers the best Apple Mac software available as a seperate download.

Full Tilt is one of the world's largest online poker sites, so there is always plenty of potential opponents online at any time of the day. At the time of this review there were 16,620 players online.

Full Tilt's main marketing tactic is allowing players to learn from and play against their stable of pro players. The main 13 players are Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson, John Juanda, Jennifer Harman, Phil Gordon, Erik Lingdren, Erik Seidel, Clonie Gowen, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen & Allen Cunningham.

With 30 World Series of Poker* bracelets between them and numerous WPT titles, the pros at Full Tilt are among the world's best players. There's also countless other 'friends of Full Tilt' that also play at the site. You can tell if there is a pro player at a table or in a tournament because the table listing will be red in color. (see the lobby screenshot to the right)

The marquee tournament at Full Tilt Poker is the weekly $400,000 guaranteed on Sunday afternoons at 18:00. It's $216 to buyin or you can win your entry through smaller buyin tournaments that run every day from as little as $2. There's also a $750,000 guaranteed monthly tournament and more than $3 million in guaranteed tournament prizes every week.

There's also a unique 'Daily Double' pair of tournaments that pay a jackpot to the players that do the best in two concurrently running $10 tournaments that start at 21:00 and 21:02 every night. There's also tournament leaderboards for the very keen and regular players.

Full Tilt's tournament offerings are top notch - if you are looking to qualify for a live poker event or fancy yourself as a good tournament poker player than you really need to give Full Tilt a try.

Each poker hand or tournament you play at Full Tilt earns you 'FTP points'. Your Full Tilt Poker points can then be used for tournament entries, or to purchase merchandise from the Full Tilt Store. With enough points you could earn yourself a Full Tilt Jersey or even have your own custom avatar designed, just like the pros.

There's also regular chat sessions with the pros and a player forum.

The cashier at Tilt is easy to use and deposits and cashouts are usualy very fast. I've never had any issues at all with deposits or cashouts.

The cashier offers NETeller, Click2Pay, Epassporte, Visa, Mastercard, Bank Transfer for deposits and cashouts via NETeller, Epassporte, Click2Pay and checks.

24/7 support is offered via email (support@fulltiltpoker.com). The support team is always very friendly and helpful. They seem to be more knowledgeable than most support staff I have come across - for English speaking players anyway - I'm not sure what they are like with other languages, but they do offer multi-language support and web help.

You can also ask other players questions in the forum.

Full Tilt Poker is licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission in Canada, one of the world's leading gaming regulatory authorities. Their shuffling algorithm and random number generator have been fully tested by Gaming Associates as a part of the licensing process.

We've met some of the Full Tilt staff and pro players, including their CEO. We think your money is 100% safe & sound at Full Tilt. Their whole philosophy is based around good, fair poker games, helping new players learn and playing the game properly using manners & correct ettiquette. We can't fault them in this category, so they earn the maximum 4.5 management & integrity stars for a privately held company.

There's not many things they need to improve, but I'd like to see these things added.

• Moneybookers as a payment option
• Some Draw Poker games
• Better descriptions of tournaments in the lobby
• Ability to choose your cashout method if you have deposited with more than one eWallet
• Make player location information available at the table

Full Tilt is one of the best poker rooms on the internet. They have great promotions and an awesome 1st deposit bonus. If you are into learning, chatting and playing with pro players then there is no better place to play online poker, especially if you are trying to qualify for a live poker event.

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