Full Tilt Introduces Drastic Changes To Stem 44% Traffic Drop

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Friday, July 31st, 2015 | Written by Charles Washington

At the beginning of 2015, Full Tilt was the second biggest poker room worldwide, with an average of 1,800 cash game players over a seven-day period, but a little over half way through the year and the site has now slipped down to 8th place on PokerScout‘s ‘Online Poker Traffic Report’, currently averaging just 1,000 players at its cash tables. That represents a massive 44.4% decline in traffic, some of which can be explained by the quieter summer months, as well as the rising popularity of lottery-style mini hyper-turbo games amongst players, which at Full Tilt are known as Jackpot SitNGos.

In an attempt to stem the downward slide, Full Tilt’s new Managing Director Dominic Mansour (photo) recently announced a series of sweeping changes to the online poker room designed to favor recreational players, who are the life-blood of the industry. In April, some of the big changes involved dropping a range of ring-game variants from its schedule, as well as increasing the effective rake charged in order to fund a more attractive reward program for recreational players. At that time, Mansour also hinted as some more bold strategic moves to come, and within the past week we have now learned what some of those drastic changes involve.

No More Bum Hunting

In online poker, ‘bum-hunters’, or grinders who only play against weaker opponents, have long been the bane of the industry as they not only prey upon less experienced players, but also sit at the virtual tables whilst refusing to play against any equally skilled opponent. This annoying and unethical practice helps propagates an unattractive, uneven playing field as weaker players lose their money too quickly, often never to return again, and so Full Tilt has subsequently introduced some modifications designed to “bring the fun back into online poker.” This includes replacing the “lobby” structure used by most iPoker rooms, in which players can view the available tables and players before seating themselves where they prefer, in favor of a new system in which players are seated automatically according to their game, stake and table size preference. In addition to preventing bum-hunting, this approach is seen as more natural for new players, and more compatible with a live poker experience.

Heads-Up Tables Removed

To improve the poker experience of recreational players, Full Tilt has removed all its heads-up tables, which over the years have become the chief feeding ground where bum-hunters park themselves waiting for “bad” player to stray in. Elaborating on his reasoning, Dominic Mansour explained:

“We’re doing this for two important reasons; firstly, Heads Up games were being adversely impacted by the minority of experienced players who targeted ‘weaker’ opponents rather than take on all challengers. Secondly, new players who tried out the Heads Up games found it intimidating and confusing (asking themselves ‘why are all these guys not playing each other?’).”

Multi-Tabling Limited

Multi-tablers are now restricted to just six tables of the same buy-in level, four tables for Rush Poker, and more than six tables if they are at different buy-ins. The general idea is to stop grinders targeting specific weaker players, whilst recreational players can then enjoy the benefits of more poker entertainment, rather than playing against tight, slow moving multi-tabling regulars.

Rat-holing Out

‘Ratholing’ is when a player sits at a table waiting to win a good pot, or double up, before automatically quitting the game to protect their stack. Not only is this considered poor etiquette, but hit-and-run players disrupt the dynamics of individual games, and so from now on Full Tilt players leaving then trying to join a table right after a win will have to buy-in with the full amount of money that they just won.

High-stakes Games Dropped

Finally, once the home of nosebleed stakes, Full Tilt has further restricted the ceiling of its cash games to the following limits; No Limit Hold’em ($10/$20), Fixed Limit Hold’em ($15/$30), Pot Limit Omaha ($10/$20), and Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Low ($2/$5). In addition, a further list of poker variants not usually popular amongst recreational players have now been removed, including Stud, Draw and Mixed Game tables.

“The new structure will present a clean offering for all players and we consider these ring game changes to be key to Full Tilt’s ongoing commitment to provide a level playing field and attracting and retaining more casual poker players,” explained Mansour.