Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt Poker came into business in 2004, and has done many things the right way over the last 4 years. The slogan of: "Chat with the Pros - Play with the Pros - Learn from the Pros" has certainly made the interface fun, and provides a playing and interaction experience unique to itself. They have marketed their famous players aggressively, and have really connected the average poker player to the biggest stars. The community on this site is one of the best.

Full Tilt poker has inevitably grown into one of the largest and most revered sites in the online poker market. It is one of the most ambitious sites, offering fabulous promotions and great sign up incentives. It is also an American player friendly site, so site volume is always large. Full Tilt is currently ranked third for overall volume.

In a nutshell: this site must be tried out by all interested in online poker.

As clearly worded in the sites slogan: : "Chat with the Pros - Play with the Pros - Learn from the Pros" it is the site with the most active big name players. Most of these pros host smaller stakes tables so anyone can play with them and have access to chatting with them. These pros include such enormous names such as Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Mike Matusow, Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon, and Clownie Gowan, to name just several of them. Don't forget that there are many more! It is awesome being able to play against the pros for many different reasons.
Whether it's being able to chat with them and ask them questions, or bluff them out of pots, or even just being able to put someone like Matusow on mega-tilt makes this an unforgettable poker experience. The site lobby is designed to make it easy to find the tables these players are on by displaying any pro-occupied table in bright red, so the Full Tilt Pros are always readily located.

Full Tilt offers many types of games, and limits of all levels. It is the busiest site for super high limits, where many of poker's elite players can be found. It is fun to watch these games, and even railbird in the chat as the hottest names in poker push millions around. This was the original 'Mega-High' limit site, with limits all the way up to $500-$1k No Limit, so it attracted the Hi Limit players early on.
Yes, these games are insane to watch, and even more insane to play if you are lucky enough to have the kind of bankroll needed to get into the game.

The games offered are the usual ones: Holdem, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo, Razz, Five Card Draw, and H.O.R.S.E. They have other mixed games, but always of the above mentioned formats. The games are offered in No-Limit, Limit, and Pot-Limit formats, and can be played in full tables, shorthanded tables, or heads-up tables.

The Sit and Go tournaments are superb, ranging in buyins from the micro $1.25 buy in to the $2,250 buy in. They provide sit and gos in 'Regular' and 'Turbo' speeds, in regular full games, shorthanded games and heads-up. All SnGs are offered in all styles of poker spread by the site.
This is an awesome site for SnGs, as they have SnGs of all kinds running at all times in the thousands. The waiting lists are short, and the action is intense. There are also satellite SnGs going for all kinds of bigger tournaments, making it easy to find the right fit for those on the satellite qualification path.

The Multi Table Tournaments are of a very high quality on this site. If you are an MTT player, this site could be the one for you. They offer so much added $$$ in tournaments it is almost unfathomable.
The tourneys start from $1-$500, so there are suitable buyins for all levels of player. They have their signature tournament every Sunday for $216, which is one of the largest of its nature currently on the web.
Full Tilt also runs around the clock satellites into the bigger tournaments, so don't be worried! Qualifying for the bigger events has never been easier with all the satellite options. Tilt also boasts the popular $12,000 EPT/WPT "Winner's Choice" Tournaments and Bounty Knockout Tournaments.

They have the semi-annual FTOPs (Full Tilt Online Poker Series), which is a week of large tournaments with huge paydays. The main event of the most recent FTOPs paid out more than $456k!!! There were 20 events with total prize money paid out to the tune of $15 million, with over 43000 players participating! If you have been missing out on the crazy action of the FTOPs, now is the time to sign up and jump in a satellite!

There are several Freerolls daily in the different poker formats offered on the site. The Freerolls either have prize pools of real money, or even satellite entries into other Freerolls that could end up being huge prize packages.

This site has an awesome freeroll program, and is recommended to anyone who wants to play for free with a chance to win something tangible.

The Full Tilt Poker interface is a refreshing angle on the traditional. They offer many types of avatars to choose. From Monkeys to disgruntled Doctors, Full Tilt has a character to appeal to anyone's mood and preference. There are four facial moods for the avatar that can be toggled at will, which is a unique way to display emotion (happy, sad, angry, and normal). There are also plenty of backgrounds to choose from so poker can be played from outer space, or on a cartoon beach.

The tables are resizable, and have tile buttons to organize them handily on your desktop when multi-tabling. The graphics are great, and this is the site that first introduced this playful style of graphics.
The lobby is set up nicely, and all the options menus are prominently displayed, so it is very easy to adjust all the variables one needs for their graphic layouts. It is even possible to save the layouts so one doesn't have to re-do them every time!
The Full Tilt server is very stable, and all the functions are designed with the upmost user-friendliness in mind. It is one of the best interfaces out there.

Like all the best sites, Full Tilt Poker has a frequent player points system in place. The more one plays raked cash games or tournaments, the more points they get. These points are redeemable for all kinds of stuff in the Full Tilt store: tournament entries, merchandise and the famous 'Full Tilt Jersey.' It is a solid reward system, and is totally worth looking into.

Full Tilt is actually a pretty tough site, even with the all the fish from the many other sites. Thousands of fish swam upstream to Full Tilt when the USA player bans started on other sites. Poker in general is also getting tougher, and the fact that this site allows USA players, whom have access to all the poker resources available, make it one of the tougher sites. Full Tilt has a reputation for being a rock heavy site, with many players only trying to play the nuts. Many of the pros also call this site home because they like the interface and limits.
With all the tighties and pros in the mix, it is not the easiest of sites.

Table selection and seat selection and note taking are extremely important to be largely successful on this site. It is not as bad as it sounds however, as wherever there are poker games; there is always fishies and donks.
Just try not to sit down against Allan Cunningham or Huck Seed at the shorthanded PLO and expect to have an easy time about it.

Since Full Tilt continues to allow US players, it is has a large amount of traffic. Many of the other site's players that had to change sites when US players got banned went to Full Tilt. The site has repeatedly stated they will never ban US players, regardless of Bush's legislation to prevent online poker.
There are over 50,000 players on this site, and games are readily available any time of day, all days of the week.

The support on this site leaves some things to be desired. It is the weakest part of the site. While understandably there is a lot they have to deal with, email response can take up to 72 hours to get a reply for. The responses are also quite generic and don't often solve problems with one email. It is not the worst support, but it doesn't equal all the positives of this site.

This is a very busy site, and games of all kinds are easy to be found at all hours and all limits. Right now Full Tilt has many sweet features aside from 'Playing, and Railing and Chatting with the Full Tilt Poker Pros.'
Full Tilt is a must try for any serious player, and can be a novel and unique experience for any new or beginning player. The interface is excellent, with fun options to choose from.
The Freerolls and promotions are top notch, and the games are plentiful in all stakes and formats. Overall Full Tilt is one of the leaders in online poker, and should be for a long time. Sign up today using the PokerNews link, and you won't be dissapointed.