It finally happened. For all of those poker players waiting in anticipation for the re-launch of Full Tilt Poker and their complete online services, that day finally came on Tuesday, November 6th. This infamous poker website was recently purchased by the Rational Group, operators of other big poker sites like PokerStars. They were able to acquire Full Tilt Poker after paying a hefty sum to the US Department of Justice, a total of $731 million, as well as agreeing to pay back the players around the world that were caught up in the 2011 debacle ($184 million from that portion is for the players, while the rest goes to the US government).
Their first operations came online on October 31st, with the launch of their play-money tables. Players from all around the world could go online and check out the tables, games, and new look of Full Tilt Poker before the real-money re-launch. Players could also check out the account balances, seeing that their money had been placed back into their accounts. With PokerStars being their sister website, players can transfer their funds over to their PokerStars account in order to continue playing or to simply withdraw the amount. Full Tilt Poker has set aside $184 million in order to give back the account balances to the international players.
With their re-launch on Nov. 6th, Full Tilt Poker has become one of the most popular poker sites since they were shut down in 2011. With their amazing marketing team, along with other strong partners like PokerNews and www.onlinepoker.net, they were able to launch the real-money poker tables an hour earlier, by 7:00 am. Once the tables launched, players started flooding in and after just one hour and a half, 22,200 players had accessed the Full Tilt Poker re-launch.
Beginning Issues in the Full Tilt Poker Re-launch
With any kind of launch or re-launch, there will always be a few issues that need to be dealt with as it happens. In the case of Full Tilt Poker, players that were trying to transfer their money to their PokerStars account or were trying to deposit money into the Full Tilt Poker accounts were getting the error message of “We can’t process your request right now, please try again soon”. These issues will be resolved quickly, and allow players to start managing their finances much easier.
Despite Full Tilt Poker having had a bad reputation due to their 2011 crisis, with the help of PokerStars, many of the players have stated they will retain their accounts with Full Tilt Poker, while only 10% said they would withdraw their money immediately; after all, they do have some great game selection and software, with a better team managing it all.
Bonuses, Promotions, and High Stakes
With their re-launch being a big success, it has to be pointed out that it was due to a great effort by their PR and marketing teams. They were able to get the highly acclaimed “The Professionals” to start playing at the re-launch; these players would include poker greats such as Viktor Blom and Tom Dwan. They have a reputation for hitting the high stakes tables and betting big, but as they are still in the early phases of the re-launch then Full Tilt Poker is not offering the $500/$1000 tables yet, but they do have $400/$800 tables.
On top of offering great tables, there is also what Sarne Lightman, Head of Marketing for Full Tilt Poker, said “We are bringing back to the players everything they loved about the site and we invite them to help us celebrate by joining our ‘Deal Me In’ launch promotions”. They are trying to give poker players the same great feeling that Full Tilt Poker did in the past, when they were ranked 2nd in player traffic.
With this idea, they did come out with some great bonuses and promotions. They have the Happy Hour promotion, where members could earn double player points and the Deal Me In bonus where players will be receiving a minimum of $200. This re-launch has many great surprises and is expected to get Full Tilt Poker back into 2nd place within 3 months.
100% up to $3,000 Bonus
Bovada is our most recommended ONLINE CASINO and POKER ROOM for US players with excellent deposit options. Get your 100% signup bonus today.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.