Full Tilt Poker is one of the biggest online poker rooms and is the home of some of the best poker players in the world such as Phil Ivey, Chris ‘Jesus’ Feguson, and Howard Lederer. With good software, huge traffic, and a great choice of games, Full Tilt Poker should appeal to all poker players. With their “learn from the pros” slogan and commitment to teaching superior poker play they’re a natural fit for what we do at Pokerology.com, and we highly recommend you play poker at Full Tilt Poker!

Please note: By signing up to Full Tilt via our links you’ll be registered as a rakeback player (see our rakeback guide for more info), and receive 27% rakeback, which is auto deposited to your player account each week. See our Full Tilt Poker Bonuses & Promotions section for more information.

Full Tilt Poker Screen Shots:

Full Tilt Poker – Full Review

Full Tilt Poker is an independent poker room which launched in 2004 and is the home of many top professional poker players, known as “Team Full Tilt”, which includes; Andy Bloch, Allen Cunningham, Chris Ferguson, Phil Gordon, Gus Hansen, Jennifer Harman, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren, Mike Matusow, Erik Seidel. Now that’s an impressive group of poker players!

The software for the site was designed by Tiltware LLC, a specialist software development company based in Los Angeles. However, the ideas and inspiration for the software was devised by members of the original “Team Full Tilt” – most notably, Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Howard Lederer, and Phil Ivey. These high profile and hugely successful poker players wanted an online poker room that was designed by poker players for poker players – and they got one!

The software is generally quick, reliable, easy to use, and has some really good features. To be honest they could still do with some improvements, and they’ve not exactly revolutionized the online poker industry. But what they have done is create a poker room which now has a huge player base, second only to Poker Stars. Player traffic is critical to the success of any online poker room, and there’s no doubt that the popularity of the players behind Full Tilt Poker and their unique selling point of “learn from the pros” has worked wonders.

Many sites use professional poker players to endorse their poker room, but nobody does it as well as Full Tilt Poker, who have an unbelievable group of truly world class poker players spreading the name, and promoting the brand. These players also play poker at the site and they regularly offer hints and tips on winning poker strategies. They don’t just sit back raking in the cash. You’ll often find members of “Team Full Tilt” ready and willing to talk via their “Pro Chat” feature, which can be found on the lobby area of the software.

We recommend Full Tilt Poker because it’s a massive site with lots of value in their cash games and tournament play. They also offer some interesting twists on standard tournament formats, and have fresh ideas that should appeal to all poker players. Put simply, it’s a top poker room with a great range of games and plenty of variety. You certainly won’t be bored playing at Full Tilt Poker.

Play with the pro’s: Join Full Tilt Poker today!

Software & Features

The lobby area at Full Tilt Poker is clean, clear and easy to navigate. Although they could do with a few more filters for separating the betting stakes for cash games, rather than just high, medium and low tick boxes. But all the usual information such as average pot, flop %, and hands per hour, is provided, and it’s easy to sort through this information to locate the right game. Finding a suitable poker tournament is much easier, with custom filters, graphical icons, and even colour codes..

The poker tables at Full Tilt Poker come in two versions; classic or racetrack. The classic version is a circular and has various background themes to choose from, such as: Vegas skyline, beach scene, jungle, and ski-lodge. The racetrack version is, yes you guessed it, racetrack shaped. It also has different background themes, and just like the classic version it can be shown with or without the Full Tilt Poker avatars. There are 70+ cartoon style avatars to choose from, such as a monkey, wizard, boxer, bikini babe, etc. The members of “Team Full Tilt” have their own avatars, so they’re easy to spot. I personally prefer to play poker without the avatars showing – and I prefer the racetrack poker table too.

The betting action at Full Tilt Poker is very user friendly. They don’t have the betting option tabs found at online poker rooms, and at first glance the bet slider can seem just like any other. But you can change the behaviour of the bet slider, such as increasing the bet amounts by clicks of the mouse, rather than scrolling. This makes it very easy to raise 3x the big blind, and so forth. You can also choose to use the wheel on your mouse to change bet amounts. There are various options to choose from, and you can change the settings quickly and easily. Oh, and all table windows can be re-sized, which is great for multi-table play.

If you like online poker rooms that run quickly and smoothly, then Full Tilt Poker certainly falls into this category. The hands per hour rates are higher than most online poker rooms, with an average of around 65-70 for a 9 handed ring game. The cards are dealt rapidly and there’s no hanging around. This is probably helped by the fact that the auto muck feature is turned on as standard (it can be turned off), so there’s less delay between hands. The software moves swiftly onto dealing the next hand, creating a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Classic or racetrack? Decide for yourself: Click here to join Full Tilt Poker

Player Traffic / Ease of Competition

Full Tilt Poker is the second largest online poker room in the world. Just like Poker Stars (the most popular) they’re an independent site and don’t share their players through a network of online poker rooms. When you also consider that Full Tilt Poker only launched in 2004, they have done amazingly well to gain such a strong market share.

A popular site like Full Tilt Poker will always have a mixture of excellent players, really terrible players, and many more somewhere in between. I tend to find there are more fish at Full Tilt Poker than at Poker Stars, certainly at the low to medium limits. Remember that Full Tilt Poker is a hugely successful marketing machine that attracts many new players to online poker. At the higher limits the play is perhaps even tougher than you’d expect at Poker Stars. This could be because the better poker players tend to appreciate the rakeback on offer at Full Tilt Poker. It might also be that they’re expecting to test their skills against Phil Ivey and co.

Go and catch the fish: Play at Full Tilt Poker

Cash Game Action

The cash game action at Full Tilt Poker is amazing, which is natural for such a large online poker room. There’s anywhere up to 10,000 cash game players spread across a huge choice of games. Here’s a rundown of what you might expect to find at Full Tilt Poker:

• Hold’em NL/PL ($0.05/$0.10 to $500/$1000): It’s not a surprise to see that no limit hold’em is very popular at Full Tilt Poker, but you’ll even find a selection of pot limit games, particularly at the lower limits. No limit hold’em action is strong at all levels up to around the high stakes of $25/$50. They also offer “cap” no limit games, which limit the betting beyond a certain fixed amount. For example in a $1/$2 NL cap game, a player may not bet more than a total of $60 per hand, even if they have more chips available to them in their stack.
• Hold’em Limit ($0.25/$0.50 to $2000/$4000): There’s lots of action for limit hold’em fans. You’ll find plenty of full tables all the way up to around the $50/$100 limits.
• Omaha H/L ($0.05/$0.10 to $2000/$4000): Full Tilt Poker offers a mixture of limit, pot limit and no limit. There’s plenty of interest at the lower levels and the higher stake Omaha Hi-Lo games are mainly limit. Though there aren’t too many high stakes games on offer except during peak hours.
• Omaha Hi ($0.05/$0.10 to $2000/$4000): The pot limit Omaha Hi games are increasingly popular at Full Tilt Poker. There are plenty of games at all levels up to $5/$10, with the cap pot limit also proving popular. There are Omaha games to be found above this level, but fewer full tables.
• Stud H/L ($0.25/$0.50 to $2000/$4000): It’s very quiet off peak but during peak hours there are enough tables at the low limits all the way up to around $3/$6. There’s not much choice above this level but you will find the odd game popping up.
• Stud Hi ($0.25/$0.50 to $2000/$4000): This is busier than stud Hi-Lo, and you should find a game up to $3/$6 even during the quiet hours.
• Razz ($0.25/$0.50 to $2000/$4000): There are always a handful of full tables at the low to medium limits, but you’ll also find active games at $5/$10 and above, including some really high stakes from time to time.
• Mixed Games ($0.05/$0.10 to $2000/$4000): Full Tilt Poker offer a selection of mixed games, such as; HA, HORSE, HO, HOE, and OE. There’s not much action to be found though, with maybe a dozen tables or more spread across the limits. Things pick up during peak hours and you might find the occasional high stakes game, if you’re lucky.

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Multi Table Tourneys (MTTS)

Full Tilt Poker offers a wide choice of multi table tournaments, with interesting structures, game variety, and buy-ins to suit all poker bankrolls. There are lots of scheduled tournaments starting every few minutes, so there’s no hanging around and waiting. Since Full Tilt Poker is a massive poker room, they attract large fields for many of their multi table tournaments, which mean big prize pools.

Of course you’ll also find a wide range of satellites to live events such as the WPT and WSOP, and big online tournaments with huge guarantees. But what I like best about Full Tilt Poker is the variety of tournament structures, such as: rebuy, deep stack, super stack, knockout and shootout tournaments. I particularly like the knockout tournaments, which means that in addition to the standard prize pool you also get a bonus payment every time you knock a player out. They’re great fun!

The tournament lobby is really easy to navigate, unlike the cash games. You can use the custom filters to find the game you want, and the information is well presented. Many of the tournament listings are colour coded, which makes them easy to spot. If you ever see a tournament listing that’s highlighted in red, then it means at least one of “Team Full Tilt” is playing too – so go get those fish!

Check them out today! Start playing at Full Tilt Poker

Sit & Go (SNG) Selection

There’s a great choice of sit & go action at Full Tilt Poker. The standard blind levels are 5 minutes, and the turbo SNG’s have 3 minute levels, which is a bit too quick for my taste. The turbo format seems the most popular, particularly at the lower to medium limits. I think 5 minutes is just right, and I’d like to see more of these than the turbo games, but I guess it’s just a case of supply and demand.

If you’re bored of Texas hold’em then you’ll find plenty of other poker games on offer too. The main sit & go lobby mixes all the games and buy-ins together so I recommend using the custom filter to narrow down your search. Perhaps you’re a fan of heads up (1 on 1) games? If so, then you’ll love the heads up “shootout” sit & go’s. For example, in a tournament with four entrants, two heads up matches occur, with the winner of each match playing in a final for the winnings. If you don’t like heads up games, then there’s plenty of other shootouts too. They’re an interesting twist on the standard sit & go format.

If you really like interesting twists then you’ll love the “Matrix” games at Full Tilt Poker. These games follow the standard sit & go format, with one major difference – you play against the same players on four different tables, simultaneously. Each table has its own payout structure, but there’s also a main prize pool for the best players over the four games. You earn 2 points for each knockout, 1 point for each player you survive longer than, and 2 point bonus for finishing first. These games are very popular and are available at different buy-ins, either 6 handed or 9 handed.

Turbo’s, shootouts, and more! Visit Full Tilt Poker

Bonuses / Promotion

You’ll be registered as a rakeback player by signing up to Full Tilt Poker via our links (see our rakeback guide for more information). Please note, you must click on our links to do this to ensure it is properly tracked. We also recommend you delete the cookies from your computer before doing this, otherwise you may not be tracked as a rakeback player, and won’t receive your 27% rakeback, which is the maximum Full Tilt Poker gives back to players, but only those who signed up for rakeback. Full Tilt Poker will pay the rakeback direct to your player accounts each week. This is the no.1 reason why you should sign up via our links!

If this is not reason enough then you’ll also be pleased to know that Full Tilt Poker offers a very generous 100% sign up bonus up to $600. Put simply, whatever you deposit, they’ll match – to a maximum of $600. Of course you won’t get your hands on the full deposit bonus right away as you have to earn it by playing poker at the site. The bonus is released as you earn Full Tilt Points (FTPs) in real money cash games or tournaments. In cash games you earn 1 point for every dollar in rake, and 7 points for every $1 in tournament fees. Each FTP releases $0.06 from the bonus – so it will take a while to earn the full bonus if you play small stakes, but it is a better bonus than those offered by many other online poker rooms. Plus, you have 120 days from the date of your first deposit to redeem the bonus and it’ll also be released in bite size chunks of 10% or $20, whichever is less.

You can also use your FTPs to buy into tournaments and get merchandise from the Full Tilt Poker online store. Yes, points make prizes at Full Tilt Poker, and you can use your points for t-shirts, caps, books, televisions, and all sorts of other goodies. But don’t get too excited, because if you want anything half decent you’ll need to generate a lot of points, and I mean a lot. However, it’s certainly better than most loyalty programs you’ll find at other online poker rooms.

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Customer Service

The support at Full Tilt Poker is not particularly impressive. They only offer email support, and provide a long list of different contact email addresses, depending upon your problem. The response times tend to be slower than average and it can be frustrating if you want a quick answer. They do have a frequently asked questions section on their website, but this is also a bit of a letdown.

However, they make up for the poor support with excellent payment processing. There are various methods of getting your money in and out of Full Tilt Poker, and payments are processed really quickly. Some sites have a bad habit of holding onto your money for far too long, but not at Full Tilt Poker. I’ve never had a problem making deposits or withdrawals, so they receive top marks for that.