Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt Poker is the 2nd largest poker site in the world after PokerStars. It bills itself as the site where you can “Learn, Chat and Play with the Pros“. In addition, Full Tilt, or FTP, is the center of the high stakes online poker action. Virtually every day there are pots in excess of six figures being contested at the high stakes tables. But that doesn’t mean Full Tilt doesn’t have games for the beginning poker players as well. In fact, Full Tilt offers games with blinds as low as 5 and 10 cents. That means that everyone from the beginner to the best poker players in the world can play on Full Tilt Poker.

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Tournaments

Full Tilt Poker’s tournament offerings are second to only PokerStars. Full Tilt’s tourney variety, guarantees and software is excellent, fast and easy to use. Some of FTP’s innovative offerings to the online poker tournament community include Knockout Tournaments and Bounty Tournaments. A Knockout Tournament essentially puts a bounty on EVERY player in the tournament. So, for an $10 bounty tournament, $8 of your buyin will go to the main prizepool and $2 will go to your personal bounty. This means that you get $2 instantly for every player that you knock out of the event. On the other hand, in Bounty tournaments, Full Tilt actually puts up a Bounty of each of its Pros that are in the event. If you knock the pro out of the tournament, you get the bounty and a t-shirt in the mail. Overall, Full Tilt has excellent tournaments, good structures, big prizepools and tons of variety.

Cash Games

Full Tilt’s cash games are also terrific. They have a wide variety of full table, 6 max, heads up and deep stack tables. Basically, you can play any sort of cash game poker you’re interested in. In addition, as stated previously, you can play as low as 5 cent and 10 cent blinds. The game gets as big as $500 and $1000 blinds in no limit hold em and $2000 and $4000 blinds in some limit games. Obviously, those huge games are for the best pros in the world to battle it out. But even if you don’t play in those games, they can be very entertaining to watch. Those pros sometimes win hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in a single day!

Traffic

Full Tilt has tons of traffic. While Full Tilt’s traffic can’t compare to PokerStars on a pure numbers basis, there are more than enough players on Full Tilt to allow you to find almost any game, tournament or Sit and Go that you might be interested in. Therefore, it basically doesn’t matter that PokerStars has more traffic except in a few cases. For instance, because of PokerStars’ traffic, the PokerStars Sunday Million will be a significantly bigger tournament than the Full Tilt Poker $750k guaranteed. But those cases are few and far between — you won’t notice a significant difference if you’re simply interested in playing a few cash game tables.

Promotions

As you would expect from a leading poker room, Full Tilt has a number of promotions available. Here are some of them:

1. The 100% up to $600 deposit bonus. This is one of the longest-running deposit bonuses in the industry. Full Tilt introduced this bonus years ago and it hasn’t gone anywhere. The idea is simple: get 100% of your first deposit matched, up to $600. That means you can get a $600 bonus if you make a $600 deposit. The bonus isn’t the easiest bonus to clear, but if you play regularly, you’ll clear your full bonus amount relatively quickly. That being said, it will probably take a few days of regular play to get your full bonus amount released into your account if you opt for the maximum bonus.
2. Million Dollar Monthly Guarantee. Once a month, instead of the regular Sunday $750k Guaranteed, Full Tilt holds a $530 buyin tournament with a $1 million dollar guaranteed prizepool. This tournament is the only regularly scheduled online poker tournament with such a guarantee except for the Sunday Million on PokerStars, so it’s a tournament you shouldn’t miss. It’s filled with satellite winners and it’s packed with value for good poker players!
3. Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) – The first FTOPS was held in August of 2006. In November 2008, Full Tilt just held FTOPS X, or FTOPS 10.  Prizepools in the FTOPS events have grown and grown, as has the list of events for each successive FTOPS.  Multiple events in each FTOPS hand out six-figure first place prizes and you can expect FTOPS XI (FTOPS 11) to be just as huge.  Look for it in early 2009.

Overall

Overall Full Tilt Poker is a terrific destination for Mac players.  The downloadable Mac client from Full Tilt was the first of its kind in online poker.  PokerStars has since followed in Full Tilt’s path, but those two sites remain the only options for non-Java Mac poker clients.  Software aside, Full Tilt’s game options, action and significant traffic make it a top choice for online poker players.  If you haven’t already, try it out today.