While my friend and colleague Dan Katz reported earlier this week on the closure of Full Tilt Poker (occurring today), it was big enough that I felt that I needed to add onto the remembrances of the site. While many may dwell on what was the end – and the nearly nomadic existence it has had over the past decade – there was a time when the phrase “Full Tilt Poker” was one of joy. Let us take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

Do You Remember the U. S. Poker Team?

Your online casino experience at Full Tilt - we offer full selection of the world’s favorite online casino games in a number of variants, including our engaging Multi Player format. Software News; Free online Poker. Play Poker for free. Have fun, develop your poker skills and win real money for free at the world's most innovative online.

1. 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.
2. RIP Full Tilt Poker, ceases operation this week - Full Tilt Poker is nevermore. The brand, owned by PokerStars, will cease operations this week on February 25. Full Tilt Poker began in 2004 and the online poker site was co-founded by Ray Bitar, Jesus Ferguson, and Howard Lederer. It was shut down on Black Friday in 2011 by the feds and acquired by PokerStars and relaunched in 2012.
3. The real beautiful game. It’s even more beautiful when you play it with Full Tilt. Sit down in the presence of the greats, like Texas Hold’em and Omaha.Play at lightning speed with Zoom, the fastest poker game in the world, or mix it up with one of our many other poker variants.Whatever way you like to play, be like thousands of other poker players all over the world and play harder.
4. As readers of this site likely very well know, Full Tilt Poker, founded in 2004, was once one of the behemoths of the industry. It was unique when it launched, as it had fast software with bright.

Way back in 2004, many in the U. S. were preparing for the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, and I was but a young(er) poker journalist. Now what do the Summer Olympics and poker have in common? One of the very first promotions for Full Tilt Poker was that they were advocating for poker to be included in the Olympics, and they took a masterful tack to build their audience.

In sending out an email to announce their “initiative” to have poker honored as an official sport at the 2004 Olympics, a company called Full Tilt Poker offered “U. S. Poker Team” hats and shirts to people who simply went to a website and gave up their email address. This masterful stroke allowed Full Tilt Poker to build an audience of poker players in general and, with the explosion of online poker, a ready database of potential players. When they launched in the summer of 2004, success was a foregone conclusion.

Many might have found the website cartoonish with its avatars, but it was just as good a poker site as the two dominant forces in the market at the time, PartyPoker and PokerStars. There was a tremendous number of games and variants offered and it offered tournaments aplenty. It was the second leg of their plan that was another masterful stroke.

As it turned out, some of the biggest names in the game had ownership in the site. Such popular pros as Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman and Phil Gordon (among others) made up “Team Full Tilt.” These top professionals were the stable for the site (part owners, as it came to be known) and they actively took on all comers on the virtual felt. This was unheard of! PROFESSIONAL poker players actually playing against those who wanted to be them…what a deal!

The first two years showed a slow but steady growth. They had an outstanding “relaxation area” for players during the 2005 World Series of Poker, adding to their legend. There was a memorable, ornate display in the “relaxation area” where the WSOP bracelets that members of “Team Full Tilt” had won over the years that was truly impressive. But the true growth would not come until 2006…

The “Golden Years” of Full Tilt Poker

In 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was signed into law and Full Tilt Poker had a decision to make. Would they follow the course of publicly traded companies like 888Poker and PartyPoker and leave the U. S. market, or would they continue to service the country against the mandates of the UIGEA? Full Tilt, like the private company PokerStars, decided to stay in the country and reaped millions for the decision.

Over the course of the next five years, Full Tilt Poker went on to become the second largest online poker room behind only PokerStars. They continued to innovate in the online poker industry, bringing out more diverse poker variants that some poker rooms would not even touch (this allowed them to do mixed game tournaments). They also became the home of “high stakes” play, as Ivey and a plethora of young hotshots – including a then-unknown ‘Isildur1’ (Viktor Blom) – who would play at nosebleed levels (eight of the ten largest online poker pots in history took place at Full Tilt).

There would also be downsides for Full Tilt. Poker professional Clonie Gowen accused the ownership of wrongful termination, claiming that they offered her a 1% share in the company when she came on (Full Tilt denied this…then). They also had several lawsuits filed against them by others who had been a part of the Full Tilt family – at one point, they literally had over 100 “Friends of Full Tilt” that benefitted from the operations (and we count getting their rake back as a benefit).

The end would come quickly and suddenly, however…

“Black Friday” Destroys the Company

In April 2011, the U. S. Department of Justice dropped the hammer on the major online poker operations in the country – PokerStars, the CEREUS Network rooms Absolute Poker and UB.com, and Full Tilt Poker. While PokerStars was able to quickly negotiate a method to repay its U. S. players all monies they had on the site, the others – Full Tilt included – had not segmented their finances between being able to pay players and pay business expenses – in essence, they were using player money to fund operations, including paying their significant personnel. It may be arguable, but Full Tilt Poker was one of the worst abusers of this fact.

In court filings over the next six months, it became known that Full Tilt Poker paid the members of “Team Full Tilt” massive monthly payments from the operational funds. This included three members of its management: Lederer, Ferguson and Roy Bitar (Bitar was the only one of these three to face criminal charges). These payments left Full Tilt with no money on hand to pay players in the U. S. once the hammer was dropped by the DoJ.

Full Tilt Poker really died then, in September 2011, when they lost their operational license from the Isle of Man. Sure, PokerStars bought them in 2012 and relaunched the site, but it was but a shell of its former self. Full Tilt Poker limped along for a few more years before basically becoming a “skin” of PokerStars and not an independent operation in 2016. It has essentially existed in name only for the past five years.

Full Tilt Poker did a lot right in its time in the online poker industry. They had a “player first” feel to them that didn’t exist in another online site, as evidenced by their “Learn, Chat and Play with the Pros” tagline. But Full Tilt Poker was eventually ruined by those very pros that were responsible for its success. It is arguable that they would still be in existence today…IF they had been responsibly managed and fiscally responsible.

Requiescat in Pace, Full Tilt Poker…it was a good run.

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.

Full Tilt Poker App

'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 Poker Usa

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.

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

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.

Full Tilt Poker Europe Online

• Tags

  Online PokerFull Tilt