If you play your online poker on Full Tilt, you have one more week to enjoy the site. The poker room announced last week that it will officially become part of PokerStars next Tuesday, May 17th, putting an end (for the second time, really) to Full Tilt as an online poker room.
The initial announcement that Full Tilt’s liquidity would be merged into PokerStars came in February, when the sites’ parent company, Amaya Inc. said that it was essentially a move to eliminate redundancies and cut costs:
This platform migration will allow Amaya’s development and technology teams to focus on improving one market-leading platform rather than two, leading to a better gaming experience for all; improvements and features will be delivered faster and more efficiently rather than doubling development requirements. For instance, rather than splitting resources developing Full Tilt Jackpot Sit & Go and PokerStars Spin & Go features independently, teams will be able to work together on delivering the best possible product on one platform.
Full Tilt will still live in a sense, as the brand will still exist, but just as a skin of PokerStars. “Full Tilt will retain its own great promotions, table layouts, specialist tournaments and branded differences, such as Rush Poker (instead of Zoom Poker),” the company said in February.
But Full Tilt’s popular online poker software will be retired; what will be known as Full Tilt will run on top of PokerStars’ software platform as all Full Tilt and PokerStars players will compete at the same table. Full Tilt apparently has no intention of selling its software.
Full Tilt players have begun to be contacted about how the transition to PokerStars will be handled. Those who already have PokerStars accounts – likely most Full Tilt players – won’t need to do anything. Their funds balances, as well as other account assets such as loyalty points, will be transferred to their PokerStars accounts. Those who don’t have PokerStars accounts will likely be able to create one and have their assets transferred or be given the option to cash out completely. Some players may run into a scenario where they were able to play on Full Tilt in their jurisdiction, but are not allowed to play on PokerStars; again, Full Tilt will let those players know what to do.
Full Tilt also sent out an e-mail this morning to announce some last minute (or week) opportunities to use freeroll tickets, as those will not transfer over to PokerStars. Next Sunday, May 15th, Full Tilt will host several bonus freerolls, allowing players to spend those tickets in tourneys with prize pools totaling $15,000.
As mentioned, most Full Tilt players probably also have PokerStars accounts, thus PokerStars probably won’t see a dramatic boost in its player traffic. Currently, PokerStars is the largest online poker room in the world according to PokerScout, with a seven-day average of 12,500 cash game players. Full Tilt is only 14th, with 550 cash game players.