Take one glance at the lobby and you can tell FullTiltPoker.com is a site on the rise. Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch and company set out to "create the best online poker experience" and I think they have succeeded. I first started playing on Full Tilt in the fall of 2004 when the site was pretty young. I didn't have to go through the earliest growing pains, but even then the traffic was low by today's standards. When I signed on Monday at 6PM central there were three thousand tables and 14,000 players! Around nine or ten it peaked above 18,000 and even in the wee hours there were still plenty of players to find a game at most stakes. This may still be far short of Party or Stars numbers but as the fastest growing cardroom on the net, Full Tilt has a lot to offer.<READMORE>Guarantees:
We talk a lot about overlays, and every poker player loves a good value, but it’s not such a bad thing when a site surpasses it’s guarantee! This means you are getting more action, bigger prize pools, and probably weaker fields. Since the average player is pretty bad, the law of averages says a larger field means more fish for you to feed on. One thing I noticed immediately about the new and improved Full Tilt is that they are beating their guarantees across the board, even in the Sunday 200K! This really reflects on the sites growth, the health of the player pool and their satellite system.
Probably the most exciting tournament Full Tilt offers right now is the nightly 17K, which gets bumped to 18K, and 19K on Saturday and Sunday. These are getting 900-1000+ entries, which at a $24 entry is smashing the guarantee. Monday night the 17K had 1075 entrants and a prize pool of over 25K. I imagine this means those guarantees will be going up, which means more players and bigger prize pools. This is the way Pokerstars built their success and Full Tilt is showing they have the savvy and the muscle to compete.
Promotions:
It’s World Series time and Full Tilt certainly has its share of promotions running. The $10 Million Main Event Mania from last year is back, which means if you qualify for the Main Event through Full Tilt and go on to win they will cap it all off with an EXTRA $10 million out of their own pocket. This may be the long shot of long shots, but why not dream big? Also Full Tilt is running monthly 20 seat freerolls to the Main Event, which you can get into either through daily freerolls or qualifying as a top monthly points earner. There are two of these left, so if you play a ton of cash games or just want to give the freerolls a shot you could win your World Series seat at no cost.
The freerolls are a nice thought and 100 lucky players will walk away with one (40 seats are left), but for the player who is serious about winning their seat, Full Tilt offers many different ways to do so. The weekly 1K buy-in satellite offers the high roller the opportunity to play at better odds of winning than the smaller buy-ins with enormous fields. There are also two weekly $200+16 1 seat guarantees, but the real blockbuster comes on July 16th. If you haven’t won your seat by then I recommend you look to Full Tilt to do so. They are hosting a 100 seat guaranteed tournament, which means $1.2 million guaranteed in the prize pool. With the direct buy-in of $500+35 it would need to draw 2400 entrants to meet the guarantee. Satellites have been running since February and there are currently 687 registered, so there may be some big value in this one. Even without a mammoth overlay if you know how to survive deep into satellite MTTs (read AawwNutz’s article) finishing in the top 100 could be your best shot at a WSOP seat this year.
Also worthy of note is Full Tilt’s approach to preliminary events. All the glory goes to the Main Event with television exposure and endorsement opportunities, but ask Johnnybax or Gank if they would trade their bracelets for anything in the world, I bet you they would say no. Winning a WSOP bracelet, whether in the Main Event or the $1,500 Razz event, is every poker player’s dream. Full Tilt offers nightly satellites to the preliminary events in the Race for Bracelets. Unlike some sites where you may win a generic preliminary seat in a NLHE format, Full Tilt spreads every game played in the World Series, so when you win a seat to play in the Omaha 8s event, you have actually played the game to get there. Since we can’t always win an event our first time playing a game, like 7-Stud for instance, getting in some practice on the qualifying trail will pay off in Vegas.
This also means if you have aspirations of playing in the first ever $50K HORSE event, or just want to be able to follow the action when it’s on TV, Full Tilt is the place for you. They spread all the games involved (Hold’em, Omaha 8s, Razz, Stud, stud Eights or Better) and have a weekly $20K guaranteed HORSE event on Sundays. Also on July 1st one lucky player is guaranteed to win a seat at the $50K WSOP event through a $500+35 satellite. So if you think you have what it takes to go beyond the NLHE craze and master the other poker disciplines, try your hand at the Full Tilt Horse events and you may find yourself sitting next to Doyle and Ivey at the big boys table.
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