Real Money Poker Games are Back at Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt Poker is finally back in action after re-launching its real money poker games as scheduled on November 6th. The online poker room is up and running just like the days of old, fifteen long months ago, but remarkably improved now that it is under the wing of the Rational Group; the same vastly distinguished company that holds the world’s most popular card gaming site, PokerStars.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the story since the ominous Black Friday of Online Poker—April 15, 2011—PokerStars head officers acquired Full Tilt Poker a few months ago when they agreed to pay off the online poker room’s considerable debt of $183 million owed to Full Tit Poker’s international members, plus remaining costs and fines that resulted in signing over a colossal check for $731 million to the US Department of Justice.

Full Tilt Poker first re-launched its play money poker tables just over a week ago on October 31st, essentially getting their operation, and any players who wanted to participate, back into the swing of things. It also gave players an opportunity to check out the new software, test the tables, and most importantly, view their accounts to ensure that the money owed them had been successfully reinstated.

Now that Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars are related, players were even given the option of transferring their funds into a PokerStars account, giving them instant access to a withdrawal option, since Full Tilt Poker was not yet prepared to handle cashouts.

It should be noted, however, that ex-members of Full Tilt Poker who reside in the United States will not be able to access their due funds via either online poker site. Americans must contact the US DOJ in order to request a return of their poker funds.

Full Tilt Poker was expected to reopen its real money poker tables at 8am on Tuesday morning, but was able to get things up and running an hour before schedule. It didn’t take long for droves of players to log into their accounts and hit the virtual felt. By 8:30, there was a staggering number of players logged in, surpassing the 22,000 mark.

With so many players attempting to transfer funds to PokerStars, place withdrawals and make cash deposits, the ensuing result was inevitable. Players quickly began receiving an error message that stated “We can’t process your request right now, please try again soon.” It’s hard to fault Full Tilt Poker for the issue when you consider the incredible overload of payment processing transactions all occurring at once, and in the end the online poker room was able to clear up the issue in a timely manner.

It certainly appears that the marketing campaign and solid backing reputation of PokerStars was able to convince the general online poker playing population that Full Tilt Poker is no longer the disgrace it once was in early 2011. Every genre of player was quickly back on the real money poker tables, from the micro-stakes cash gamers and SNG fanatics right up to the famous group known as “The Professionals”, including the likes of Tom “Durrrr” Dwan and Viktor “Isuldur1” Blom. The big wigs were quickly found grinding it out on the $400/$800 tables.