Full Tilt Free Poker
Our commitment to improving the PokerStars software and the PokerStars customer experience in recent years has limited the amount of focus and resources we could apply to the evolution of Full Tilt.
The last remaining assets of the Full Tilt software are set to be taken offline on February 25. On that date players will no longer be able to access the iconic brand, pokerfuse has learned.
Fulltiltpoker.net is the best educational poker website on the internet. Learn how to play poker and practice for free on our poker software. Download Full Tilt Poker on your PC or laptop using our step-by-step instructions to start playing real money poker today! Our detailed guide shows you how to download the Full Tilt client software and install it on your computer, as well as how to register an account and make your first deposit.
- Step 1 – Download & Install the Full Tilt Poker Software. Click on Download Now to go to the Full Tilt Poker download page and follow the instructions below. 1.1 – Hit the “Play Now” button and then Click on the “Run” button to start the download process. 1.2 – Select your Language.
- Full Tilt Poker offers a wide selection of cash games and tournaments. They are proud to offer satellite, sit-n-go, and multi-table tournaments daily. Unfortunately, the game selection at Full Tilt Poker has declined dramatically since it was re-launched in 2012, as the site now mostly offers Texas Holdem.
- Do desenvolvedor: Full Tilt Poker Download to join this ambitious poker room that was launched in July 2004. Fulltilt poker offers Deposit bonus 100% up to $600, which is released to your account in $20 increments (or 10%, whichever is lower) at rate of $0.06 per point earned.
Since May 2016, Full Tilt had been operating as a skin on the PokerStars network under its own branding, sharing the same games and player pool, rewards program and account system.
The only differentiator was the cosmetic look and the retention of the Full Tilt assets including the classic cartoonish avatars and Full Tilt special table themes.
On Thursday next week, this will no longer be the case as the Full Tilt desktop and mobile application and its branding will be completely ceased and replaced with PokerStars, its original buyer.
Existing Full Tilt users can migrate to the PokerStars platform using the same Full Tilt username and password, the FAQ page for the migration process states. Players’ balances and bonuses will automatically be switched to the PokerStars platform.
- For more than a decade, PokerStars has led the industry with the best software, largest player pool and safest environment to play.
- Great Welcome Bonus: $30 freeplay on your first deposit, letting you play real money games for free, or a huge 100% up to $600 deposit bonus.
- Home of the Sunday Million, WCOOP & SCOOP, Spin & Gos and more.
Full Tilt Shutdown Process Already Started in 2020
The decision to shut down Full Tilt did not come out of the blue. PokerStars began the process to close Full Tilt software for the dot-EU players in October last year.
In fact, this was speculated by our industry-focused sister site Poker Industry PROin early 2020 considering the cuts the operator had been making. Ten months later, the operator took its first step and switched the download link for Full Tilt.EU desktop and mobile platform with that of PokerStars.EU.
It also released a FAQ page that is now available on PokerStars’ .EU and .COM sites.
“Our commitment to improving the PokerStars software and the PokerStars customer experience in recent years has limited the amount of focus and resources we could apply to the evolution of Full Tilt,” the FAQ page for the pending shutdown states.
It remains to be seen whether FullTilt.com website will remain available once the software is gone. PokerStars has yet to respond to our inquiry.
One and a Half Decades of Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker was launched in 2004, just three years after PokerStars’ inception. It was opened with the involvement of some of the biggest names in the industry: Raymond Bitar, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow, Jennifer Harman and others.
Post-UIEGA, it became the main competitor of PokerStars and the second largest online poker room worldwide. It also became home of nosebleed cash game action involving big pros such as Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Viktor “Isildur” Blom and Gus Hansen—who all became Full Tilt ambassadors.
The second-largest online poker room changed the landscape of online poker by introducing several unique features to its poker platform. It invented Rush Poker, a fast-fold poker variant that has been a wildly success innovation and is now ubiquitous.
However, Black Friday happened in 2011 and this led to the brand’s downfall. It did return in late 2012 after it was bought by PokerStars with its own player pool and software and continued to operate for few more years, but its traffic was nowhere close to pre-Black Friday.
In 2015, the operator adopted a dramatic strategy to make the poker room more attractive to “recreational” players by removing table selection, heads-up games, nosebleed games and mixed games.
It then revamped its reward program to please casual players, a pivotal moment for the industry in its approach to player loyalty.
No, Full Tilt Software Is Not Up for Sale
However, this was not well received by the players and its cash game traffic took an immediate hit.We feel it is time to consolidate brands so that everyone has access to the newest features and most innovative games which are available exclusively on PokerStars
Ultimately, Full Tilt was migrated to the PokerStars platform in 2016.
Initially, the site retained the old Full Tilt branded games such as Jackpot Sit & Go’s instead of Spin & Go, and Rush Poker in place of Zoom. But the branding was gradually changed to match that of PokerStars.
At that time, a Full Tilt representative told PRO that the original software would not be put up for sale.
Over the past few years, PokerStars has made several changes to its platforms, including introducing a new game engine, Aurora, and a new Mobile NG platform for its mobile apps.
Keeping Full Tilt in sync with these upgrades was obviously an extra burden for the operator. Although it did eventually bring Aurora on Full Tilt, it had fallen out of step in many key areas such as lacking new games like Grand Tour, Tempest and even Spin & Go Max, which was launched many years ago.
Considering that the operator had been putting more focus on PokerStars brand, the shutdown of Full Tilt ultimately seemed inevitable.
“We feel it is time to consolidate brands so that everyone has access to the newest features and most innovative games which are available exclusively on PokerStars,” the site states.
Table Of Contents
One of the most iconic — and perhaps most infamous — brands in poker will become a thing of the past on Feb. 25.
That's the reported date on which PokerStars will shelve Full Tilt Poker, its former arch rival, for good. The news was first released by Pokerfuse and is confirmed by a FAQ page on PokerStars' website detailing some of the minutiae of the move for its remaining FTP players.
Those players will essentially just be migrating over to the main skin of the network, so there won't be much meaningful change in their playing experience.
'Our commitment to improving PokerStars software and the PokerStars customer experience in recent years has limited the amount of focus and resources we could apply to the evolution of Full Tilt,' the company stated. 'We feel it is time to consolidate brands so that everyone has access to the newest features and most innovative games which are available exclusively on PokerStars.'
A Rich History...
Full Tilt Poker was not one of the early sites to market, dealing its first virtual cards in 2004.
However, co-founder Ray Bitar teamed up with some of the biggest names in the industry. The likes of Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Mike Matusow were behind the brand, and their celebrity, combined with an aggressive marketing push, led to huge success for the site.
'Learn, chat and play with the pros.'
That ubiquitous slogan, along with the trademark black and white commercials creatively utilizing the site's immense roster of sponsored pros, beckoned countless thousands of players to give Full Tilt a try. The brand became a world leader, trailing only PokerStars in a raw numbers.
But where PokerStars laid claim to the biggest quantity, Full Tilt could credibly claim to house the best quality of poker in the world.
The highest stakes games in the world usually ran there, including monstrous and legendary games as high as $500/$1,000 blinds on the famed Rail Heaven table. Patrik Antonius, Viktor Blom, Hac and Di Dang, Gus Hansen, Ivey and more made Rail Heaven their favored battleground, which in turn made it the greatest place for fans to watch six-figure pots trading hands on the regular.
Correspondingly large pot-limit Omaha tables eventually produced the biggest pots in online poker history.
The software, too, was almost as celebrated as the quality of the games. Colorful avatars and lively animations made for an entertaining experience for the casual player. A fun MTT schedule gave tournament grinders tons of options at every price point and let players aspire to one day earn a custom avatar by virtue of winning a Full Tilt Online Poker Series event.
Considered industry leaders in many respects, the FTP team birthed innovations like fast-fold poker — now a mainstay almost everywhere — and rolled out creative ideas like Irish poker that were later adapted in some fashion by PokerStars.
It all made for a high-quality and incredibly popular product. And it all came to a crashing halt in 2011.
...But a Marred One, Too
Full Tilt Sign In
The machinations of Black Friday dealt harsh blows at many levels of the poker industry, with the ripple effects being felt to this day.
However, perhaps the most shocking development in the aftermath was the revelation that Full Tilt's accounts were more than $300 million underwater. The company had $60 million cash on hand but player balances amounted to $390 million, with $150 million of that owed to U.S. players.
After repeated assurances from company reps that players would be paid, the fact of the matter was the company simply didn't have the money to make good on that promise.
Luckily for everyone involved, PokerStars stepped in and acquired Full Tilt's assets, with part of the deal stipulating they'd make the players whole in the process.
Entire books could be written about the ordeal and the fallout thereafter, all of which is to say the whole thing is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say some former FTP brass paid millions in penalties, others became pariahs, friends became enemies and countless poker players everywhere were left with sour tastes in their mouths regarding a once beloved company.
Relaunch and Merger
Full Tilt Poker relaunched in November 2012, but it quickly became a shell of its former self. FTOPS returned, and high-stakes action even got rolling, but the site predictably failed to regain its former glory.
As the operator slid in the worldwide rankings, company brass attempted some moves that left many in the industry scratching their heads. Rake was bumped up in many spots, rewards were cut in others, table maxes were changed from six to five players in some games and many high-stakes offerings were removed from the client altogether.
Full Tilt Free Poker
The result?
A dive in traffic as unhappy players left the site. That was in August 2015.
Early the next year, decision-makers at parent company Amaya opted to pull the plug on Full Tilt being a standalone operator, migrating the players into the same pool with PokerStars. What would have once been monumental, industry-shaking news, barely registered as a blip on the poker radar, the surest sign of all that the glory days of Full Tilt were far in the past and never likely to rekindle.
Seemingly Little Chance of Return
Full Tilt Poker Free Money No Deposit
After the merger, PokerNews spoke to industry expert Chris Grove to get his take on the functional end of the once-proud brand. He pointed to the decline of the international online poker market as a whole as a big reason for the decision to migrate the players to PokerStars.
'In a world where Full Tilt found a unique niche or footing, or in a world where online poker continued to expand, I think we certainly could have seen the two sites continue on separately,' he said. 'Only when it became clear that Full Tilt wasn't finding that footing did a merger start to seem like a matter of 'when' more than 'if.'
With online poker moving toward a regulated future in the U.S., that meant there could have been buyers interested in acquiring Full Tilt. They'd get to avoid the headache of constructing software from scratch, to say nothing of the brand's name recognition stateside. Grove estimated PokerStars could rake in between $10 million and $50 million with such a move.
Of course, that would require interest by the selling party as well, and that never seemed much of a possibility. Poker Industry PRO reported being told by a company rep the software wasn't for sale ($), and nothing that happened in the intervening years has made that appear to be mere lip service.
The most likely case going forward would appear to be Full Tilt Poker simply collects dust in a virtual PokerStars storage room. In one sense, having your once-chief rival neatly tucked away on some backup storage drive is the ultimate power move.
In another, though, it's the most sad, meek ending imaginable to a company that took the poker world by storm more than 15 years ago.
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