Full Tilt History

History Of The Full Tilt Poker Room

The Full Tilt Poker room was launched in July 2004 using software created by the company "Tiltware" (now no longer exists). The room worked closely with a number of professional online poker players such as Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson to help develop the most player-friendly room possible.

You can find a list of the most popular pro players at the room on the Full Tilt pros page.

Full Tilt logo history.
Full Tilt 2004.
Full Tilt 2005.
Full Tilt 2006.
Full Tilt 2007 - 2008.
Full Tilt 2009.

Full Tilt logo history.

The Full Tilt logo has remained almost exactly the same since it was first designed in 2004. The only difference is the added texture to the red background and slight 3d-styling, but aside from that the logo has been left virtually untouched.

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Full Tilt 2004.

I can't find any decent screenshots of Full Tilt during 2004, but we can safely assume that the design was pretty basic when Full Tilt first started out.

For a new poker room Full Tilt did a very good job of attracting players to their tables. FT ran a very aggressive marketing campaign, which helped the room to obtain a satisfactory player base to keep the tables sufficiently busy throughout the day.

Full Tilt was far from being a dominant room in the world of online poker in 2004 though overall, especially with other rooms like Paradise Poker and Party Poker so far ahead of the pack.

Full Tilt 2005.

2005 brought the first major redesign of the Full Tilt website. This revamp made the room look even more attractive to the newer players, which helped the room sustain it's steady growth rate through 2005.

In terms of traffic, Full Tilt was still far from "kicking ass and taking names". However, the steady growth meant that the room gained further recognition as a well respected room, setting itself up to expand and develop in to a more dominant room over the coming years.

Full Tilt 2006.

The website design for Full Tilt remained largely the same in 2006 with only a few minor updates. I would show a screenshot, but there are no decent ones lying around at the moment. The change in traffic is the most interesting development anyway...

After the UIGEA passed in October 2006 Full Tilt really started to rack up the numbers in its player base. Large poker rooms at that time like Party and Paradise stopped accepting US players, which meant that many migrated to rooms that did like PokerStars and Full Tilt.

As the numbers at rooms like Paradise and Party went down the numbers at rooms like Full Tilt and PokerStars went up. There were some pretty big changes during this time and some rooms benefited more than others. As you can guess, Full Tilt was in the "more than others" group.

PokerStars picked up the most loose US traffic, but the rise in traffic for Full Tilt was very significant and moved it up in to the top tier of poker rooms in terms of total player traffic.

Full Tilt 2007 and 2008.

Again, no screenshot for these years I'm afraid. However, the major change for the website was an improved structure that allowed it to load a lot faster than it used to. Other than that, the design remained the same throughout 2007 and 2008.

Full Tilt's popularity increased throughout 2007 and 2008 as the room went from strength to strength in terms of player traffic. Further TV advertising (see the Full Tilt ads) and major tournament sponsorship helped to boost brand recognition and build the number of new players trying out online poker at Tilt for the first time.

By the end of 2007 Full Tilt became the 2nd most popular online poker room (behind PokerStars).

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Full Tilt 2009.

The biggest design update in Full Tilt's history took place in mid-2009 with the introduction of a new website and a new lobby design as shown above. The old design wasn't really lacking in any way, but it is clear that FT just wanted to make sure that they are constantly innovating and attempting to improve the overall online poker experience to keep new and existing players interested.

The new design hasn't dragged in thousands of new players by itself, but it hasn't done any harm to the player numbers whatsoever, so it can only be a good thing. This new design id a definite step in the right direction and I fully expect FT to continue to expand as an online room, even though hitting the top-spot is still a little distant at the moment.

Nonetheless, FT remains at a very comfortable 2nd in terms of player traffic. Saying that, with the attractive $600 Full Tilt bonus and the ability to play Full Tilt on Mac computers I wouldn't be surprised if the room actually made it to #1 within the next 2 or 3 years.

By the way, for all those that still prefer the old lobby design, you can still use it by reverting to the "classic" view in the lobby options drop down menu.

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