On Friday, Full Tilt Poker officials announced changes to the site's rakeback and rewards system ahead of a scheduled November 6 re-launch. Shyam Markus, formerly FTPDoug, posted the news on Two Plus Two, noting that Iron Man, Black Card, and affiliate-paid rakeback are all history. Instead, a simplified system will be introduced that tops out at paying $2.50 for every 100 Full Tilt Points earned, which works out to 25%. All monies will be paid weekly and the new rewards system will be open to all Full Tilt members.The new system won't have deductions for store purchases and promotions, for example, so as Markus pointed out, "The 25% will almost always beat the 27% that rakeback was giving." As part of the changes, Full Tilt will switch over to the Weighted Contributed method of calculating rake and away from the Dealt method.
As Markus revealed to the poker community, the weekly cash payments to players do not use up Full Tilt Points. Therefore, "You can still spend them in the store. This means that, depending on how you spend them, points add an additional 4% to 5% to the program, giving the top level of the new program a giveback of up to 30%… Since there are no fee deductions, all FTPs are worth more to former rakeback players than previously, which increases the value of promotions like Happy Hour and Take 2."
According to Markus, the highest echelon of Full Tilt's new rewards program is "significantly easier to achieve" than the Black Card was. Speaking of the Black Card program, it will make its return to the new Full Tilt, but take on a different form. What that means remains to be seen, but details will likely be released in the near future.
On why Full Tilt would move away from Iron Man, Black Card, and affiliate-paid rakeback and toward a singular system, Markus posted, "The three programs had their advantages, but overall it was too many programs and they were confusing too many players… This was not a trivial decision, but in the end we decided that the benefits of having a unified program were worth the change. So, when we re-launch on November 6th, it will be without Iron Man, Black Card, or affiliate-paid rakeback."U.S. players will not be able to fire up real money games on the new Full Tilt and are still in the dark on the process of claiming their account balances from the Department of Justice. The DOJ was seeking Claims Administrator applicants as recently as August, but has yet to announce any time frame or process for dispersing player balances. Also unclear is whether U.S. poker players will receive their account balances in full or get a percentage on the Dollar.
This week, U.S. Full Tilt players received an e-mail from the site that read in part, "Full Tilt Poker will not offer real money online poker in the U.S. until it is permissible to do so under relevant law… Only play chip games will be available to Full Tilt Poker players in the U.S. following re-launch in the first week of November. Your Full Tilt Points balance will remain intact in your account."
While several PocketFives players in the United States were excited to receive correspondence from Full Tilt, others pointed out that no repayment plan has been announced. The e-mail concluded by saying, "Please note that we are unable to answer queries in relation to your funds – all such questions should be directed to the DOJ in accordance with the procedure to be defined by them."
Stay tuned to PocketFives for the latest Full Tilt Poker news.
