I discovered Full Tilt Poker while browsing through Howard Lederer's website. He and quite a few other Stars of the poker world (Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Phil Ivey, Phil Gordon, Andy Bloch, and more...) are involved with and helped create the site.

What I Like:

1. The absolute best feature of this site is the simple fact that many of the Stars involved with the site play there in low-limit games on a regular basis. This alone makes it worth the download. You can play against and chat with real poker pros, which to my mind is a great way to learn about the game.
2. The graphics for the site are spectacular. You can select from several different backgrounds and each player gets to select an avatar out of quite a good number of 3D cartoon heads. Plus, each avatar can display different emotional states on its face (happy, sad, or normal). Lots of fun!
3. Game play is fast and all of the standard features for a poker site are present, including; fast-play buttons, chat, player notes, hand history, etc...

What I DON'T Like:

1. Although making deposits seems fairly easy, withdrwals are a pain in the butt for me. I use ePassporte for all of my gaming deposits but when I withdraw money, I like to get a check. With Full Tilt it seems that you can only withdraw using the same method you deposited with. Because I use ePassporte, the only way to get at my money would be to purchase an ePassporte Visa for 35$ US. For me, it's just not worth it. Also, to get your money out takes to long in my opinion. On PartyPoker (see link to the right), they will pay out to my ePassporte account whithin 1 hour and the option is always there to ask for a check.
2. There are not enough 6 player tables. I like to play exclusively on 6 player tables because it allows me to play a little looser than on a 9 or 10 person table. When I first downloaded the software from Full Titlt, there were almost no 6 player tables, now it seems that they are adding more, which should improve things.
3. The hand history feature on this site basically shows you a screenshot of the final state of the hand played. I like to know what was bet and by whom in each stage of the hand. To get this information, I had to set the Dealer Messages option to "everything" so I could scroll through the chat and figure out what happened. In play, this makes the chat window very noisy.
4. Their bonus structure makes it very hard to get your bonus. You have to play far too many raked hands, in my opinion, before they release any real money into your account.
   

Site Rating:

• Graphics: 5/5
• Features: 4/5
• Cashier: 2/5
• Game Play: 5/5

If you do decide to try it out, look for me there. I play as "LearsFool". You can also play against me on my favourite site, PartyPoker.com where I play as "LearsFool2".