Full Tilt Poker 2018
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Everybody remembers the story of Chris Moneymaker parlaying a $39 PokerStars satellite into World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event glory back in 2003.
That miraculous win in poker’s World Championship sparked the game’s famous “boom” era when grade schoolers and their grandparents alike dreamed of bluffing top pros and dragging monster pots.
Visit any college dorm or suburban living room back then, and chances are good you’d find folks huddled around the computer grinding out hands on their favorite online poker room.
But what if I told you that during the fateful poker boom days — which spanned 2003 through 2006 — most Americans hit the virtual felt at PokerStars’ chief rival, Full Tilt Poker?
Launched in 2004 by a cadre of accomplished card sharps, Full Tilt Poker immediately staked its name as the online poker room of choice.
Boasting colorful animated avatars, flashy onscreen graphics, and a powerful poker software engine created by Chris “Jesus” Ferguson — the 2000 WSOP Main Event champ with a Ph.D. in computer science — Full Tilt Poker had it all.
Almost overnight, the nascent website attracted a deep stable of sponsored pros, many of whom were brought in as pseudo-investors thanks to small-percentage equity stakes. Anyone who played poker back then will likely feel a funny sense of nostalgia looking at this iconic photograph, which features Team Full Tilt in all its glory.
Shot in black and white along Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas, the promo pic showcases a who’s who of poker talent at the peak of their powers. Ferguson and his signature black cowboy hat strides purposefully toward the camera, flanked by legendary figures like Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, John Juanda, and Jennifer Harman.
Full Tilt Poker Sign In
Between them, Team Full Tilt owned dozens of WSOP gold bracelets, tens of millions of dollars in tournament earnings, and untold adulation from the rank and file of poker’s rapidly expanding fan base.
Full Tilt Poker Hits the Big Time
Before long, the crew could be found appearing regularly on hit TV shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark. In a typical scene shown here in this Poker After Dark highlight, members of Team Full Tilt usually found themselves enjoying the endgame of a heated match after dispatching pros representing rival sites.
For a long time, it appeared as though Full Tilt Poker and its world-famous representatives could do no wrong.
Young guns like Viktor Blom and Tom Dwan transformed the site’s high-stakes cash games into poker’s most prestigious arena, with “railbirds” logging on just to sweat the six-figure pots whizzing to and fro as pixels on the screen.
And thanks to tournament series like the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS), the site gave rise to modern-day Moneymaker tales when satellite entrants like Jerry Yang and Peter Eastgate claimed the WSOP Main Event title.
The law made operating an online gambling business a federal crime, and almost immediately, rival site PartyPoker picked up stakes and withdrew from the American market altogether.
Full Tilt Poker’s gravy train was too rich to give up that easily, though, and like chief rival PokerStars, the company decided to test the feds by staying stateside and serving American players in spite of the law.
That decision seemed like a good idea for the next five years or so, as Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars established a dual monopoly over the American online poker marketplace. In the years to come, anybody in the US playing online poker likely had an account on one, if not both, of these opposing titans.
But the house of cards came crumbling down on April 15 of 2011, a date known today as “Black Friday” amongst poker people. On that day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized the domain names for Full Tilt Poker, Pokerstars, and Ultimate Bet, while issuing indictments for the sites’ corporate leaders.
The Long Arm of the Law Comes Calling
Just like that, the lights went out for America’s online poker industry, leaving thousands of players and hundreds of millions of dollars in the proverbial lurch.
You can read about the details behind Black Friday in an in-depth profile by PokerNews, but suffice it to say, April 15, 2011, marked the end of the road for Full Tilt Poker.
That might have been the end of the road for the site itself, but as it turned out, Full Tilt Poker had far more serious scandals to come.
While its main competitor PokerStars set to work paying back player accounts almost immediately and settling up with anybody who had a balance on the site when it was seized, Full Tilt Poker found itself unable to make good.
As it turned out, the site’s higher-ups — many of whom were the very same players proudly repping the site’s famous patch during the glory days – had made a disastrous gamble of their own.
Full Tilt Poker Net
Rather than segregating player funds in a separate bank account — thus ensuring every dollar deposited by players remained easily accessible for withdrawal purposes — Full Tilt Poker essentially used that money as a slush fund of sorts.
Top pros like Ferguson and Ivey received regular “dividend” payments topping seven figures for their sponsorship duties, but the dough came from player deposits instead of the site’s operating funds.
The feds declared Full Tilt Poker to be a Ponzi scheme, with executives using player deposits to line their pockets, all while knowing full well they couldn’t pay back every user if a “run on the bank” ever occurred.
What followed was one of the most disappointing and distasteful episodes in poker history, with players worldwide waiting several years to receive their hard-earned money via a lengthy restitution process.
That process was finally completed in 2016, thanks to intervention by PokerStars which saw the site purchase Full Tilt Poker’s assets and repay players.
From there, Full Tilt Poker has been consigned to history’s scrapheap, nothing more than a monument to the greed and hubris of a few avaricious pros.
But while the site itself is no more, the men and women who once proudly proclaimed themselves to be Team Full Tilt live on today.
If you clicked buttons on the once-dominant poker platform back in the day, or you’re simply curious as to what happens when stars see their light dimmed, you might be wondering what happened to high-profile pros like Lederer, Ferguson, Ivey, and the rest.
As it turns out, the path from playing poker professionally to running a Ponzi scheme and getting caught up by the government takes many forms. The most infamous Team Full Tilt figures have led wildly different lives since the site’s dissolution, as you’ll learn in our “Where Are They Now?” biographical entries below.
Chris “Jesus” Ferguson
When the Full Tilt Poker craze was at its peak, a mild-mannered math whiz became the face of the franchise.
And for good reason.
After laying claim to the most prestigious title in all of poker — winning the WSOP Main Event in 2000 — the man they call “Jesus” went on to win four more gold bracelets over the next three summers.
As a side gig of sorts to his poker superstar persona, Ferguson also helped to build the software platform later dubbed “TiltWare” while founding Full Tilt Poker.
While his exact role with the company was deemed “Director,” Ferguson essentially oversaw the rapid rise of the site from fledgling online poker room to the most prominent place to play worldwide.
For that reason, when everything came crashing down and the Ponzi scheme was exposed, the majority of poker fans out there laid the blame at Ferguson’s feet. He immediately became persona non grata in the poker world, and after amassing hundreds of live tournament cashes between 1993 and 2010, Ferguson entered a self-imposed exile.
Just like that, a man who made himself a mainstay of the tournament circuit vanished into the ether.
Ferguson eventually reached a financial settlement with the DOJ, without admitting any wrongdoing, but he was basically a ghost between 2010 and 2016.
Howard Lederer, his counterpart on top of the Full Tilt Poker food chain, had previously issued a public apology (more on this below) for the player funds fiasco days before the WSOP began, so this development may have made Ferguson more comfortable.
In any event, the poker masses were none too pleased, especially after Ferguson declined to comment when asked about the situation by members of the poker media.
Instead, he offered a rote answer by repeating,
“I’m just here to play poker.”
And while he may not have cashed in that first $10,000 buy-in Stud event, Ferguson came to play in 2016. By summer’s end, he had compiled ten cashes across the spectrum of buy-ins and variants, including several deep runs and even a final table performance.
All the while, poker players subjected Ferguson to a steady stream of insults, nasty looks, and other signs of their displeasure.
This negativity prompted fellow six-time WSOP bracelet winner Layne Flack to tell PokerNews that Ferguson was getting a bum rap from the public lynch mob.
“Chris Ferguson has done a lot of great things for poker.
He’s a standup guy, and all the decisions made by Full Tilt Poker don’t fall on him. I firmly believe he didn’t take one dime from anybody.
It’s just not in his nature. It’s more in his nature to give everything to everybody, than take anything from anybody, and that’s a fact.”
A great debate ensued, with a small minority of the poker world insisting that Ferguson — never known for being greedy, or even especially interested in the corporate machinations of his company — was in the dark about all those millions in stolen player funds.
But the majority of folks out there demonized “Jesus,” blaming him for their loss of online poker income and years of uncertainty regarding their Full Tilt Poker bankrolls.
He even nabbed another gold bracelet in the € 1,650 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better at the WSOP-E.
The run was enough to take home WSOP Player of the Year honors that year, an award which obviously sparked another round of debates about Ferguson’s rightful place in poker.
Just before the 2018 WSOP kicked off, Ferguson finally did what Full Tilt Poker players everywhere desperately wanted, issuing a public apology for everything that went wrong with the site:
“I’d like to take this brief opportunity to address the poker community which I love and have been part of for a long time. I deeply regret not being able to prevent Black Friday from happening. After Black Friday, I worked relentlessly to ensure that all players got paid back, and I sincerely apologize that it took as long as it did.
I also realize it has taken me a long time to make any sort of public statement and I appreciate my fans and the poker community as a whole for the patience and support. One day, the Full Tilt Poker story will be told, and like many of you, I look forward to that day.
I hope to see you all at the World Series of Poker this summer. Thank you and good luck.”
Last year, Ferguson once again proved his poker mettle, cashing 18 times on the WSOP felt while making several final tables.
Howard Lederer
If Ferguson was the public face of Full Tilt Poker, “The Professor of Poker” was the man behind the curtain.
Lederer ran the shop, serving on the board of directors and devising the dividend payment scheme that ultimately doomed the site. Whether or not he knowingly defrauded players is another matter, but at the very least, Lederer played loose and fast with the finances while believing a “run on the bank” would never occur.
It did, of course, and like his fellow poker legend, Lederer disappeared from public life altogether. After scoring 106 live tournament cashes between 1987 and 2011 — including two WSOP gold bracelets — Lederer wasn’t seen at the poker table whatsoever until 2016.
In 2012, however, it was Lederer who broke the proverbial ice, coming out of hiding to give a now-infamous interview with PokerNews titled “The Lederer Files.” As you can see in this clip, a sweaty, nervous Lederer remained evasive and unrepentant, essentially blaming CEO Ray Bitar for any misdeeds that happened to occur.
The fallout from that disastrous interview was so severe that Lederer retreated back into exile, only reappearing in 2016 after PokerStars rescued Full Tilt Poker by purchasing the site and repaying players.
That summer, Lederer submitted a written apology to the poker world, absolving himself of responsibility nonetheless:
“I am writing to apologize to everyone in the poker community, especially to all the players who had money on Full Tilt Poker on April 15, 2011. When Full Tilt Poker closed in 2011, there was a shortfall in funds, a distressed sale to recover those funds, and a long delay in repaying players.
Throughout this period, there was little explanation for the delay, and no apology. Players felt lied to. They trusted the site, and they trusted me, and I didn’t live up to that trust.
I take full responsibility for Full Tilt’s failure to protect player deposits leading up to Black Friday. The shortfall in player deposits should never have happened. I should have provided better oversight or made sure that responsible others provided that oversight.”
Lederer then jumped into the $10,000 Deuce-to-Seven Single Draw World Championship event at the WSOP, all while 2012 Main Event winner Greg Merson used Twitter to urge fellow players to “slow-roll” their nemesis at every available turn.
Lederer failed to cash in that event, and despite sporadic appearances at the WSOP in intervening years, he has yet to register a live cash since Full Tilt Poker collapsed.
Annie Duke
As Lederer’s sister, Duke was officially signed to a sponsorship deal with Ultimate Bet, another online poker room which fell apart over a “Super User” cheating scandal.
But while she wasn’t an official employee of Full Tilt Poker, Duke played a significant role in legitimizing the site via interviews and public appearances.
Once thought of as the most accomplished woman in the game — thanks to a WSOP gold bracelet win in 2004 and a subsequent “Tournament of Champions” victory — Duke also withdrew from the tournament circuit in 2011.
But her exit from poker had its beginnings even before that, as Duke appeared on The Celebrity Apprentice in 2009. Competing against the likes of Dennis Rodman and Khloé Kardashian, Duke wound up finishing second to Joan Rivers in the reality show competition.
By 2012, with the Full Tilt Poker and Ultimate Bet scandals still lingering, Duke attempted to launch a live tournament series called the Epic Poker League (EPL).
Serving as the commissioner, Duke oversaw the EPL’s operations, giving interviews and appearing at tournaments to drum up interest for the “pro’s only” league.
After only three EPL events, however, the league’s parent company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Fittingly, Duke’s demise vis a vis the EPL involved wanton misuse of company funds, fraudulent claims to players about incentives and prizes, and rampant unpaid debts.
By 2013, with her reputation already in shambles, a series of leaked audiotapes appeared to show that Duke was one of the so-called “Super Users” who had access to opponents’ hole cards while playing on Ultimate Bet.
At the time, Duke issued public denial of those claims, contending that her access to other players’ hole cards was strictly a technical matter and not one she exploited for personal gain:
“The release of this audio has spurred accusations and I want to make it clear that I have never used a tool on a delay or otherwise that gave me or anyone else access to hole cards for use during real money play nor was I aware that such a tool existed until the scandal broke.”
Despite the denials, Duke was no longer welcome among the poker populace, so she made an abrupt career change by becoming a “life coach.”
Touring the public speaking circuit, Duke used her previous experience as a poker champion to offer members of the corporate class advice on reading people, making sound decisions, and managing risk.
Last year, Duke released a book entitled “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts” (2018), which includes vapid pablum of the following sort:
“How that ended up turning out that one time shouldn’t actually have any effect on whether the decision is good or not. The decision is good in absence of whether it gets caught or whether it doesn’t
This is the problem of resulting: what happens is that now we take this bad outcome, we think it’s a signal for the decision quality, and then we’re going to actually change the way that we make decisions in the future, based on this one outcome.
There’s too much luck in life to do that.”
Conclusion
Whether you believe the men and women behind Full Tilt Poker were criminal masterminds bent on stealing from players or simply poker pros in over their head while running a global corporation is a matter of personal preference.
Obviously, the folks who had their hard-earned bankrolls frozen for several years based on financial malfeasance will lean toward the former.
But even if Ferguson, Lederer, and Duke had no idea what the accountants were doing with player funds, the buck stops with them as public ambassadors and founders of the company.
Knowing that both Lederer and Duke are essentially non-entities in the poker world circa 2019 should provide some comfort, but Ferguson’s return to the WSOP bracelet winner’s stage still stings.
Hopefully, one day, the full truth about who knew what, and when they knew it, will be exposed for the world to see.
Until that day comes, however, poker players everywhere are left to wonder exactly what happened behind the scenes at one of online poker’s signature sites.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Still not sure? No problem – We’ve put together detailed step by step instructions for you…
Step 1 – Download & Install the Full Tilt Poker Software
Click on Download Now to go to the Full Tilt Poker download page and follow the instructions below.
1.1 – Hit the “Play Now” button and then Click on the “Run” button to start the download process.
1.3 – Click on the “Next” button to start the Installation Wizard
1.4 – Accept the License Agreement and click “Next”
1.5 – Accept or change default installation location & click “Install”
1.6 – Ensure “Launch Full Tilt Poker” is ticked and click “Finish”
Step 2 – Create Your Free Account
After the software has installed then you can create your own account, choosing your nickname that you will be known as at the poker tables and also the Avatar to represent you.
2.2 – Fill out the form and choose the Name / Avatar you will appear as at the poker tables then click “Sign Me Up”
2.3 – Check your email & enter the validation code you received then click “Validate”
Step 3 – Login and Hit the Tables
Now you have signed up you can claim your free first deposit bonus – that’s up to $600 completely free as a gift from Full Tilt Poker. Just make a deposit and whatever your deposit Full Tilt will match it as a gift.
3.2 – Choose a deposit method and make your first deposit – remember whatever the amount of your first deposit – Full Tilt will double it automatically for up to $600 Free!
3.3 – That’s it – All Done. Now just select Real Money in the lobby and choose the table to sit down at and get playing poker!
If you are having any problems getting started with Full Tilt Poker then please do not hesitate to contact us and we’ll be only too happy to try and help you out.
Don’t like pictures? Here is the text version…
Downloading the Software
Downloading Full Tilt Poker onto your PC, laptop or Apple Mac is as easy as clicking a button. Everything is done for you and all you have to do is follow the easy instructions given to you.
First of all click on Download Now which will take you to the software download page. From there click on the big red round button with “Play Now” written in the middle of it.
A pop up may appear asking you if you want to accept the file download. Once accepted the file will automatically download to a destination of your choice on your computer. Normally this will save to the Downloads folder on your computer. For Apple Mac users the software download page will automatically detect you are on a Mac and download the correct version of the software for you.
Once downloaded, find the file called “FullTiltSetup.exe” and open the file. You will be asked to select a language and then you can then proceed through the screens by clicking on the “Next” button. You will be asked to accept the terms of the license agreement which you do so by ticking the check box after which the “Next” button will become active and you can continue on to select the Install button on the following screen to start the installation.
The destination of where the program will install to will automatically be selected, but this can be changed by clicking on the Change button and selecting a different destination on your computer.
After a few minutes the installation will be complete and you will be given the choice to launch the Software when clicking on the Finish button. If you choose not to launch Full Tilt straight away, there will be a shortcut icon put onto your desktop where you can enter the Full Tilt poker room at any time.
Creating an Account
When you launch Fill Tilt poker for the very first time you are presented with three options. The first option is to create a new account, the second is to watch a table which allows you to go in and view any tables currently in progress. The last option is to log in with an existing account which is for players who already have an account set up.
To create an account you select the big red “Create New Account” button from which you will be presented with the new player signup form.
The first field you need to complete is the Player ID. This is the Screen Name that you will play under that all opponents will see. Once you have entered your preferred Screen Name click on the Check ID Availability button next to it to see if the name you have chosen is taken by another user. If it has, you will be presented with available alternatives or you can re enter another name and try again.
You will then be asked to enter a password and re-type your chosen password in the next field. You have to do this because you cannot see what characters you are entering in the password fields, so this is to prevent you from making any mistakes. If the passwords do not match you then know you have hit the wrong key some where within the password, so its best to retype the password again in both fields.
Once you are happy with your password enter a valid email address in the next field. You can then select your Avatar which is the character that will appear when ever you sit down at a table. You can change this again later so don’t worry too much if you are undecided.
Make sure you have clicked on the two boxes where you confirm you are over 18 years of age and that you agree to the terms and conditions. Once done hit the red Sign Me Up button at the bottom of the screen.
You have now created your FullTilt Poker account but a screen will pop up which asks you to validate your email address. To do this open your email account which you have entered onto your Full Tilt account details and you should have received an email from the Full Tilt Poker support team. This will contain your validation code. Copy and paste this code into the space provided and click on the red Validate button to continue. Validation codes are valid for 24 hours and you can get another code resent to you by clicking the blue “Resend Code” link.
When the email validation code is accepted you will now have a live and active account and be ready to play poker.
Play Poker
The only step left now before you can start to play poker is to make your first deposit. To do this click on the large red “Deposit Now” button in the top right of the lobby screen.
FullTilt accepts all major payment methods, so select your preferred option and follow the instructions on screen to make an initial deposit. Remember that you can get up to $600 free on top of your first deposit if you have downloaded the software via the links on this website. Whatever amount you deposit Full Tilt will match with a bonus so deposit $600 and get another $600 for a total of $1,200 or any other amount below $600 will be matched in the same way.
You won’t be able to just cash out your bonus amount straight away and in your bonus will be released to you in stages as you play poker. This is a fraud prevention method to ensure only genuine players benefit from the bonus. Full details can be found in our Full Tilt Bonus Guide.
Once you have made a deposit and have some funds in your account balance then go back to the lobby screen. You will first be presented with the simple version of the lobby where you make a series of choices and let the software find you a table. You can also select the “advanced” view which provides you with a full list of tables for you to browse through and select from.
Click on “Real Money” and then complete the other selections to Type, Game, Limit and Stakes that you wish to play. Once a table has been selected you can choose an empty seat to sit down at and select the amount of your bankroll that you wish to sit at the table with.
Now all that is left is to play poker. The software is very intuitive and you should have no problems knowing what buttons to press to take the actions you want. Good Luck!