Full Tilt Poker Craze Leveling Off

When Full Tilt Poker re-launched on November 6th, 2012, the masses gathered round to see if the online poker room’s new owners were able to breathe new life back into the one-time favorite. At its highest point since re-launch, Full Tilt was pulling an average of 8,000 real-money players. As that new car smell begins to wear off, so has the enthusiasm of players worldwide.

According to poker traffic reports from Poker Scout, FTP’s ativity has plummeted a staggering 53%, leaving the poker room with a 7-day average of 3,850 active players. On the bright side, even after the considerable loss of traffic, Full Tilt Poker is easily maintaining its current position as the second largest online poker site in the industry.

PokerStars continues to uphold its top position on the totem pole, and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime in the near, or distant, future. With a 7-day average of 23,400 grinding the virtual felts of PokerStars, Full Tilt would have to see a sudden 600% increase to even come close to matching the popularity of Stars. Then again, now that PokerStars’ parent company owns FTP, the rivalry between the two card gaming sites just doesn’t seem as exciting as days past.

As many of you know, PokerStars made the acquisition of Full Tilt Poker during its settlement agreement with the DOJ to pay off the disgraced site’s incredible debts, as well as its own recompense; a grand total of $731 million.

The most intriguing query, in my opinion, is what has caused the significant drop in activity at Full Tilt Poker. It certainly could be that the craze has worn off. Countless players were owed millions of dollars. After logging into their accounts and making their withdrawals, perhaps many decided to sever ties, ending their relationship with the anterior ignominy. Despite its new ownership, some may not be able reconcile the fissure of trust.

If we compare the percentages of traffic at PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, rather than the actual traffic rate, we find that the top seed also realized a considerable decline in traffic since last week, 10% down. However, PokerStars just finished dealing its 90-billionth hand, a promo that attracted an astonishing 93,000 players to the poker room on the day it awarded more than $68k to a highly fortuitous “m1sspiggy”. It’s understandable that the traffic would decline after that point.

Full Tilt Poker, on the other hand, lost its traffic in the midst of the FTOPS series; nearing its end, in fact, when individual tournament prizes hit their utmost value. The FTOPS XXI Main Event came to a close yesterday, awarding nearly $3 million across the vast prize pool – $453k to 1st place winner Yan “yadio1111” Dion – but the numbers had already declined at that point.

Only time will tell why the new Full Tilt Poker lost half of its player base so rapidly. Unless this regression continues, Full Tilt Poker does not appear to be under any threat of losing its 2nd place spot in the online poker industry. The third place belongs to the iPoker Network (Will Hill, Titan Poker, etc.) with a 2,750 week-long average, shadowed closely by Party Poker with 2,650 in the fourth position.