A couple weeks ago, Full Tilt Poker announced that it would soon be making big changes in an attempt to better the poker experience for its players and improve the site’s poker economy. We’re not sure anybody expected anything this severe. Full Tilt revealed significant changes to its cash games this morning, arguably the most drastic revamp any online poker room has ever made.
In a blog post, Full Tilt’s Managing Director, Dominic Mansour, introduced the changes:
Many players that are new to the game can find the traditional online poker ring game lobby unwelcoming, so we’re streamlining the journey, helping people to get into their game smoothly and quickly, wherever they may be playing.
When a player arrives at a live card room, they tell the poker room manager what game they want to play and the poker room manager will take them to a table with a free seat so that they can start playing straight away. As players join and leave the live card room, the poker room manager brings new people together to create new tables, and moves players from short-handed tables to ensure every player has the best possible experience.
Full Tilt is introducing a very similar system for our online play – an online system that will make it as easy as possible for you to load up the software, choose your game, and start playing immediately.
No longer will players see a list of ring game tables in the Full Tilt lobby. No longer will players be able to select their own table. Instead, similar to how it works in Rush Poker, players will now simply choose a game type and stakes and the software will seat them at an appropriate table. Players will generally not be asked to start a table heads-up – the software will wait until there are at least three or four people before starting a new table. When more than one previously full table becomes short-handed, the software will combine them to try to keep as many people playing on full tables as possible.
Players who don’t like the table they are on can hit a “Request Move” button to switch, though that request won’t necessarily be granted if there are no other tables open.
In order to prevent people from “gaming” the system, Shyam Markus, Full Tilt’s Poker Room Manager, explained a few measures put in place:
• There is a table max of 6 per game (just like each Rush stake has a max of 4).
• Every time you enter a specific ring game, a 30 minute timer gets created and starts ticking down. You can only have so many active timers per game, and when you hit that max you can’t enter that ring game again until one of those timers clears. This will prevent players from joining and leaving their tables over and over again hoping to table select.
• There is very little ratholing possible. There is now a 2 hour rathole timer, and it works across the entire game/stake level. So if you buy-in for 40BB (the new minimum at regular tables, up from 35BB) and double up, then leave the table, if you try to buy back into that game/stake level, you’ll be required to buy in for 80BB, even if you wouldn’t be sitting at the same table.
But wait, there’s more. And these changes might seem even nuttier. Heads-up cash game tables are GONE. Full Tilt determined that the heads-up lobby was way too intimidating and the games were plagued by bumhunters, skilled players who just sit and wait for weaker players to join. Markus said that according to Full Tilt’s data, the more a new player plays heads-up in their first month on the site, the less likely they are to come back for a second month. Heads-up cash games are hurting Full Tilt’s economy, so they have been eliminated.
Also gone are Stud, Draw, and Mixed games, simply because Full Tilt determined that there was no longer enough interest to keep them going. Nosebleed stakes are also gone, “mostly [because] these games simply didn’t fit with what we were trying to do anymore.” These tables were the most popular for railbirding, as they were populated with the most successful, well-known poker players, but since Full Tilt no longer allows individual table selection, the opportunity to railbird is gone.
Full Tilt cash games are now Hold’em and Omaha only, catering to recreational players. As you can see, this is a gigantic shift for the poker room and there is more to come. Next up are changes in the rewards program, changes that “haven’t been tried before.” Sit-and-Go’s will also see modifications later this year.