Full Tilt Poker
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Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker is one of the Net’s premier online poker rooms and, frankly, it’s pretty easy to understand why. With legendary pros inviting you to “play where they live,” thousands of online poker players from across the world have flocked to Full Tilt Poker. The sheer volume of people playing on the site makes it appealing. You can jump into a cash game at any time of the day or play in a tournament that fits your bank roll. The best part: Mac poker players aren’t left out in the cold. If you haven’t had a chance to check out Full Tilt Poker, now is the time. It’s one of my favorite places to play.
Full Tilt Poker Download Overview
It’s really simple to download Full Tilt Poker onto your Mac and start playing. The entire process is outlined in easy to follow, step by step instructions on the site, so if you get lost or confused during the process, it’s easy to find your way. Each step comes complete with a screen shot of what you should be doing along with a full text explanation. I found myself looking at these a few times and they were really helpful.
Alright, you’re ready to play some online poker on your Mac. First, visit Full Tilt Poker and click the giant red “Download” button in the middle of the screen. This will launch the download process. The file is about 16 MB and should take you all of two to three minutes to download on a standard broadband connection.
Next, a folder with a Full Tilt Setup icon will appear on your screen. Double click the Full Tilt Poker icon to launch the setup program. Your Mac will prompt you for your system’s security password in order to install. Just enter the Name and Password you selected when first setting up your Mac. If you don’t know it, check your System Preferences. If you click the “Accounts” icon, you can change your account’s password.
Next, you’ll be greeted with a license agreement. These are always fun to read in detail, but you can skim through it and then click “Continue” and “Agree.” Here’s a screen shot of the license agreement page while you’re downloading Full Tilt Poker so you can get a preview of this step in the process:
Once you’ve accepted the License Agreement, your Mac will install Full Tilt Poker fully, which will take a few minutes to complete, but the software quickly lists off everything that’s being installed, which is fun to attempt to read.
It’s now time to play! Go into your Applications folder and double click the Full Tilt Poker icon. A login screen will pop up. If you already have an account on Full Tilt Poker, enter your user name and password and you’ll be playing Mac poker in no time. If not, you can quickly set up a new account by clicking “Create New Account.” Fill out all the information you’re asked for and establish an avatar – an image that takes the place of your face in an online poker room like Full Tilt.
Like all other times that you create a new account, make sure your e-mail address is valid. Full Tilt Poker will send you a validation e-mail with a special code in it. All you have to do is copy/paste this code into the “Validate E-Mail Address” field found by clicking “Account” on the top bar of your Mac. It’s pretty easy! As soon as you validate your e-mail, you’re ready to hit the tables.
One very unique feature you’ll be prompted with along the way is the ability to customize what type of table appears. Your options: Classic with Avatars, Classic without Avatars, Racetrack without Avatars, and Racetrack with Avatars. The Racetrack table is a bit cleaner than the Classic table, as you can see below. I’m a classic guy, though, and use the Classic with Avatars look. Here’s a sneak peak at each type of table view:
Poker Selection on Full Tilt
Full Tilt is one of the best sites out there if you’re searching for a wide variety of games. I also like that tournaments on the site come in all shapes, sizes, and buy ins, which means there’s always sure to be something that wets my whistle. Check out the basic online poker lobby on the Mac poker version of Full Tilt:
Navigating the lobby is straight-forward. A radio button on the top lets you toggle between Real Money and Play Money games. There’s a variety of games in each, so you’ll be treated to some action regardless of whether you want to spend money. You can see by the stats in the lower right that, as I took this screen shot, there were 13,904 tables hosting 46,424 players at 1:00am Eastern Time on a Friday. Tables with action appear in red, as you can see by this $100/$200 No Limit Holdem game above at a table called Relic. The average pot was a balmy $3,683 and the two players were firing through 143 hands per hour. That’s what I call high stakes poker!
Here’s a look at a real money table on Full Tilt Poker:
You can sort tables by the criterion in each column, so if you’re an action junkie like me, you can sort by Hands per Hour (H/hr) and choose from among those with the highest numbers. If you want to deposit, the Cashier button is big and red. It even resembles a poker chip.
Ring games include Hold’em, Omaha High/Low, Omaha High, Stud High-Low, Stud High, and Razz. Each has its own button on the top if you only want to see active games of that type of poker.
Are tournaments your cup of tea? Full Tilt Poker has a very wide variety of tournament games, sizes and buy-ins. Check out the Tournament Poker lobby and you’ll see exactly what I mean:
You can find tournaments in Omaha, Hold’em, Stud, and Razz at buy-ins ranging from a few dollars to four figures. For some real fun, try the $216 HORSE tournament every Sunday. You can test your skills at Hold’em, Omaha, Razz, Stud, and Stud High Low Eight or Better, which are the five games that make up HORSE.
If you click on a tournament, you can see the details for it on the right hand side. For example, this $3.30 tournament I’ve selected in the screen shot above is a satellite into the $750,000 Guarantee tournament on Sunday. You can filter the tournament lobby to show only tournaments that are running and only those that are completed.
At first glance, the blue, red, and green symbols next to each tournament may seem a bit daunting. However, a convenient key makes each symbol easy to interpret. It’s found in the lower right corner. There are easy to recognize symbols for rebuy tournaments, super stack tournaments (that is, tournaments where you get more starting chips), turbo tournaments (tourneys with shorter blind levels that typically finish in a shorter amount of time), six handed tournaments, double stack tournaments, and knockout events.
Depositing on Full Tilt Poker
Playing for real money on your Mac is pretty easy. You can start by grabbing your wallet and yanking out your Visa or MasterCard credit or debit card. Some will work, some won’t. It all depends on where you live and your bank.
If your credit or debit card doesn’t work, there are a few other options you can consider using:
Click2Pay is a online e-wallet that you can fund using your credit card, debit card, or bank account. Once you have your Click2Pay account set up, you’ll be able to deposit money on several of the major online poker sites (not just Full Tilt Poker).
Another e-wallet option is epassporte, which is accepted by Full Tilt, PokerStars, UltimateBet, and several other major online poker rooms. It typically takes a couple of weeks to set up an epassporte account, but once the process is completed and your account is operational, you can deposit money onto an online poker site quickly.
Cash Transfer is another option you can use, but you’ll have to go to a store with instructions from an e-mail from Full Tilt Poker in order to deposit.
Marquee Promotions on Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker is one of the best online poker sites for playing in high quality, fun tournaments, so if you’re looking for an array of multi-table action any day of the week, Full Tilt Poker is for you.
The $750k Guarantee
At 6:00pm ET every Sunday, this $216 tournament guarantees at least three-quarters of a million dollars in payouts. Satellites start at a cool $2.25, so the $750k Guarantee is well within your bankroll, large or small. It’s been interesting to watch this tournament develop over the course of Full Tilt Poker’s existence and it now regularly attracts the top online poker players week in and week out. If you get knocked out early, you can try your luck again in the Sunday Mulligan, which is a $216 buy-in tournament with a $150,000 guarantee. It kicks off about an hour after the $750k Guarantee starts.
The Sunday Brawl
A few hours before the $750k Guarantee, check out The Sunday Brawl. It’s a $256 bounty tournament that ships $200 of each entry to the prize pool and $40 to the Knockout Bounty pool. Every person who enters The Sunday Brawl has a $40 bounty on their heads, which means you don’t even have to finish in the money to take home some cash. This high-stakes bounty tournament kicks off at 2:00pm ET. At the time of writing, one person had knocked out 21 people in a single tournament, so the competition is pretty fierce.
World Series of Poker and Aussie Millions
Full Tilt Poker allows users of Mac poker and Windows poker software alike can satellite into the largest live poker event in the world and the largest live poker event in the Southern Hemisphere. Direct entry events run at regular intervals on the site and each tournament features a healthy satellite structure. The WSOP occurs every June and July from the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The Aussie Millions occurs every January from Melbourne, Australia.
Full Tilt Online Poker Series
The Full Tilt Online Poker Series, or FTOPS as it’s known as in the online poker world, is a multi-day tournament series that attracts the brightest and the best the online poker world has to offer. It has grown steadily since it began and currently features Omaha, Stud, Razz, HORSE, and, of course, no limit hold’em. Online poker extraordinaire hoodini10 was the very first winner of an FTOPS event, long before the tournament expanded to boast over $10 million in guarantees. Read that sentence one more time: $10 million in guaranteed money It’s one of the few times when you can see a veritable “who’s who” of online poker stars vying for a massive payday.
The FTOPS even includes a $2,500 two day event with a $1.5 million guaranteed prize pool. The end of the first day’s action occurs when Level 17 is completed or the field has shrunk to two tables, whichever comes first. It’s an epic event that makes a player feel like they’re at the World Series of Poker.
The Full Tilt Poker Pros
No discussion of Full Tilt Poker would be complete without a look at the Full Tilt pros. The ranks of Full Tilt Poker are a major reason the site is successful. Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Phil Gordon, John Juanda, and Mike Matusow are among the dozen professional poker personalities that call Full Tilt Poker home. Almost every Full Tilt commercial that I can recall features the pros prominently. Playing with the best is one of the dreams of every aspiring poker player and Full Tilt has tried to capitalize on that as much as possible.
Get started now by heading over to Full Tilt Poker. You’ll be playing in no time.