PokerStars vs. Full Tilt Poker
October 25, 2007
PokerStars vs FullTiltPoker - Two of the largest online poker sites in the world, huge marketing budgets, thousands of players, biggest professional poker players and more. Which online poker room comes out as the top rated?
This matchup was inspired by putting up the two largest USA friendly online poker sites against one another heads up, in a winner take all battle royal… Ok, maybe that is a bit much, but we will take a look at these two rooms and see which features make each room stand out above one another.
There is also a good poker forum thread comparing pokerstars vs fulltilt, feel 
free to check it out and to leave your comments about which room you like the best.
Of course, you can also visit www.pokerstars.com and www.fulltiltpoker.com to download the software yourself to test them yourself.
For another good Online poker vs Online poker matchup in the Bodog vs Sportsbook.com Poker matchup.
*hint, these two rooms are the two largest and highest quality online poker rooms, it’s going to be a good battle to see who comes out on top. We are comfortable with you playing at either of these rooms as they are secure, reliable and have excellent reputations from the online poker community.
Poker Room vs Poker Room Categories
- Software / Game Download
- Poker Players
- Traffic
- Game Selection
- Tournaments
- Bonuses
- Customer Support
- Deposit and Withdrawl
PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com Software
PokerStars.com download at: http://www.pokerstars.com
FullTiltPokerdowload at: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com
Let’s start with screenshots from both online poker rooms.
 The PokerStars.com Poker Table - Fully resizeable tables, easy to multi-table. Upload custom image. Responsive, fast and easy to use game interface. Good sound scheme as well, not annoying as some other sites. PokerStars.com is my personal favorite poker software. It is sleek, easy on the eyes, extremely stable, extremely user friendly, functional and with a large number of options. I really like it.  The PokerStars lobby, tons of options in the ‘request’ file like look up a player, search for a tournament, get hand history as well as the standard features for the lobby like avg players per flop, hands per hour, avg pot size etc…  The FullTiltPoker.com Table. Screenshot of a high stakes table, common on FullTilt Poker. This screengrab is from the “Racetrack” option with “Steel” Background. They also offer 4 other categories (reviewd below).  The FullTiltPoker.com Lobby - You can also search for players, find tournaments and easy to navigate games. |
PokerStars vs FullTilt Poker Software
- Both have tables that you can resize.
- Both offer smooth multi-table action
- Both accept USA Poker Players
- Both offer world class software
- Both offer Player to Player $$ transfers
- FullTilt has more customization options
- FullTilt is a Mac Friendly Poker site, - Poker Stars is not, although they are working on a Poker Stars Mac Compatible software.
- PokerStars software has a more stable reputation, although it is extremely rare for either of these rooms to be down. Imagine their hourly rake??? no way you’d let your site be down either
- Both have fair, respectable and trusted reputations from the online poker world.
- PokerStar.com allows custom image avatars, FullTiltPoker.com has a selection of graphic avatars.
- Poker Game Software winner - PokerStars.com
PokerStars.com simply sets the gold standard for the highest quality online poker software. Once you play there, you will understand.
FullTiltPoker.com is my second favorite online poker software, behind PokerStars.com and they do have more options so you can customize your online poker experience 
FullTiltPoker.com offers more options for your table view. You can choose the classic view, with the larger cartoon like avatars that many people still use, and associate with FullTilt Poker.com.
With the classic view, your avatar has 4 facial expressions, from normal, to happy, to sad and to ‘what the fuck?’.
It was fun for a little while, but I switched to the racetrack view with avatars and is what I use mostly now.
Another cool feature of the Full Tilt Poker Game Download, is that you can open up the lobby and easily find out if a “Full Tilt Poker Pro” is playing. If they are, the table is highlighted in red. If you check the screenshot above you’ll see that there is a “Red” $1000/$2000 High Stakes Limit Texas Holdem game going on. Sick.
Pro’s play at PokerStars, but their tables look no different than any others in the lobby, so it is harder to find the pro’s. Also, the ‘named fulltiltpoker pro’s’ will have their real name as their avatar.
Custom Pro Avatars. Pro’s use their real name at Full Tilt. If you see Chris Ferguson at the table, it is really him. Check 
out these screenshots of Full Tilt Poker Pro’s like Phil Ivey vs Layne Flack.
I really can’t go wrong with recommending either of these poker softwares, so this won’t be the determining factor as to which of these mega giant online poker rooms wins the heads up poker room vs poker room battle.
Poker Players and Traffic at Full Tilt Poker vs Poker Stars
Poker Stars.com is the largest online poker room in the world in terms of real money poker players. Not only are they the largest, the 2nd place competitor whiThe day that PartyPoker.com left the USA poker market, PokerStars.com became the largest online poker site in the world.
Poker Stars is averaging over 10,000 real money players. That is almost twice their nearest competitor (FullTiltPoker and PartyPoker at a virtual dead heat for 2nd place with just over 5,000 Real money players avg each.).
FullTiltPoker.com has now moved to be in a pure dead heat for the 2nd largest online poker room in the world. At the time of this review, PokerSiteScout shows that both FullTilt and Party have 5200 real money players on average. They have the second most number of USA poker players online, and represent a huge portion of online poker players online poker site.
Combined, FullTiltPoker and PokerStars make up the vast majority of USA online poker players.
Fish Factor - How bad are the PokerStars and FullTilt Poker players?
PokerStars Players gets a 6.0 / 10 fish factor
FullTilt Players are on average 5.5 / 10 fish factor.
Honestly, there are plenty of good and bad players at both site, considering that nearly all the online ‘pro’s have accounts at both sites as to the vast majority of casual players. Once they get so big, there will always be a spot to find and make good money.
Fulltilt has slightly better players because of the ratio of the professionals that play on Full Tilt Poker.
| PokerStars Pro Players | FullTiltPoker Pro Players |
|
Daniel Negreanu Barry Greenstein |
Phil Ivey Howard Lederer Chris Ferguson John Juanda Jennifer Harmon Phil Gordon Eric Lindgren Eric Seidel Clonie Gowen Andy Bloch Mike Matusow Gus Hansen Allen Cunningham Brandon Adams Aaron Bartley David Benyamine Andy Black Farzad Bonyadi Brad Booth Alan Boston Steve Brecher Richard Brodie John Cernuto Lynette Chan David Chiu John D’Agostino Roland de Wolfe Perry Friedman Eric Froehlich Rafe Furst Kristy Gazes David Grey Jared ‘ TheWacoKidd’ Hamby Chip Jett Katrina Jett Berry Johnston Alfredy Toto Leonidas JJ Liu Jeff Madsen Greg Mascio Nenad Medic Robert Mizrachi Jordan ‘ iMsoLucky0′ Morgan Carlos Mortensen Greg Mueller David Oppenheim Max Pescatori Ben Roberts Eddy Scharf Erica Schoenberg Huckleberry Seed Keith Sexton Paul Sexton David Singer Gavin Smith Kenny Tran Marco Traniello Jon PearlJammer / PearlJammed’ Turner Mark Vos Thomas Wahlroos Paul Wasicka Lee Watkinson Paul Wolfe Steve Zolotow |
Ok - I knew about let see about 6 or 7 “big name pro’s at PokerStars, but I’ve heard of nearly all of those guys at FullTiltPoker.com.
Alright, so that is a recap of the players at these rooms, Stars is slightly fishier in my opinion but only barely. There are plenty of bad players at both rooms. Plenty of traffic across all levels, all games.
Poker Game Selection at PokerStars.com and Full Tilt Poker
Massive game selection at both rooms. Texas Holdem, Limit and No-Limit, Omaha, Hi-Lo, Stud, HORSE, Ring Games from SNG’s, Tourneys, Satellites and Multi-Table events.
Full Tilt Poker does excel by offering RAZZ ring games, but my god why anyone would want to play Razz…. You think Holdem is Brutal?? Start playing Razz.
PokerStars Limits range from $.02/$.04 limit up to $1000/$2000 with steady traffic up through the $100/$200 levels. No Limit traffic starts at $.01/$.02 up to $200/$400, with steady traffic up to $25/$50 although a game breaks out at the highest levels every so often.
FullTiltPoker is the place to play for the highest stakes cash games online, PokerStars.com is the place to play for the biggest tournaments online anywhere.
FullTiltPoker wins the “Game Selection Category” offering a wider variety of games and traffic up to the highest levels on a regular basis.
Poker Tournaments at Poker Stars vs FullTilt Poker.
PokerStars.com has the largest weekly tournaments online. The “Sunday Million” tournament at PokerStars is their flagship weekly tournament and there is an incredible $1,000,000 guaranteed in the prize pool. They also offer warm up events with $500k and $250k guaranteed.
FullTiltPoker offers a $500k guaranteed on Sundays and nightly $50k guaranteed events called the “Fifty Fifty”. I personally like the Fifty Fifty because it is a $50 buyin and guarantees $50,000. Not bad.
PokerStars.com offers SNG’s from heads up through 180 man events. Buyins start at the $1.00+.20 up to the $2000+90. Note that the lowest stakes SNG’s have the biggest rake… if you can play at the $5+.50 level you’re only paying 10% rake, which isn’t as bad. 1500 chips, 10/20 starting blinds and 10 minute rounds, turbos half that.
FullTiltPoker.com offers SNG’s from $1+.25 up to $5000+200. Worse rake at the lowest stakes. SNG starting chips are $1500 starting chips and 15/30 starting blinds. 6 minute levels. Turbos have 3 minute rounds.
Overall Tournament Structure goes to Full Tilt Poker, because as this Full Tilt Poker Review says,
“Full Tilt Pokers blinds never double, leading to friendly blind to chip stacks in the all phases of tournaments, early, middle stages and late stages. Think about it, those pro players up above not only play at FullTiltPoker, but many of them were involved with the game design and creation, including blind structure(s). It’s very player friendly”
PokerStars vs FullTiltPoker Bonuses
These two bonuses are different as night and day.
Both match at 100% percent.
PokerStars is a $50 bonus match bonus that is easy to clear.
To earn this bonus, you will simply need to play on PokerStars and collect the number of Base FPPs equal to 10 times the bonus amount. You have six months after your first deposit to earn all the FPPs you need to cash out your bonus. *This promotion ends on December 31st, 2007.
FullTiltPoker offers a $600 bonus that is moderate to release, I think it more of the industry standard bonus for an established poker site.
At FullTiltPoker.com, Each player point is worth $.06, so you can earn up to $18 per hundred hands. The bonus amount will be automatically credited to your Bonus Account where it will be held and released to your cash account in increments of 10% of your initial deposit, or $20, whichever you earn first. So if you do a one-time deposit of $100, each $10 (10%) earned will be instantly released into your account. Deposit the full $600 and your account will get credited for each $20 of bonus earned. At three points per hand, each $20 increment can be earned in fewer than two hours of play at only one table.
PokerStars.com Bonus code = FIRST2008
FullTiltPoker.com Bonus code = KICKASSPOKER
*PokerStars.com Marketing Code also offered to lock in bonus.
Here is more detailed information on different Poker Bonus details.
PokerStars & FullTiltPoker Customer Support
Both offer email only customer support, as well as live support during game play. Both sites allow you to ‘chop’ near the end of tournaments, with live support at the table while the tournaments are underway.
Full Tilt Poker vs PokerStars.com Deposit and Withdrawl
Not a whole lot of comparisons to be made here as these two rooms have virtually the same deposit and withdraw methods including bank wire, debit cards, epassporte and pokerstars.com sometimes offers ‘e-checks’. The short answer is visit the cashier once you have an account and I’m quite certain you will be given plenty of ways to deposit. Withdrawls come via check, bankwire, epassporte and a few other options. Checks take about 2 to 3 weeks from both rooms.
PokerStars.com vs FullTiltPoker.com Final Recap
- Overall Winner - PokerStars.com
- Software / Game Download - PokerStars - the gold standard
- Poker Players - PokerStars
- Traffic - PokerStars (biggest in world)
- Game Selection - FullTiltPoker
- Tournaments - Wash - Both kick major ass
- Bonuses - FullTiltPoker (bigger)
- Customer Support - Wash
- Deposit and Withdrawl - Wash
- Both offer a Mac Friendly Download (Stars is in Beta Testing still)
Again - the best way to see which one you like the best is to simply download the software and see for yourself.
Do you agree that PokerStars.com is the overall winner in this poker room vs poker room match up?
Click the green “thumbs up” if you agree that PokerStars.com wins.
Click the red “thumbs down” if you think that FullTiltPoker.com wins.
Please leave your comments on which poker room is your favorite.
Just some small differences in each sites interface.
FullTilt has a great text/graphic hand history window.
Where as PokerStars is a text only.
Both let you see mucked showdowned hands.
Both log a hand history that you can access.
Full Tilt record the hand history on your computer
Where as PokerStars will email you hand history from a simple request at the main lobby.
PokerStars emails tournament results if you cash.
PokerStars will email you tournament history and stats from a simple request at the main lobby.
PokerStars lets you play 10 handed STTs
Where as Fult Tilt table max is 9.
Thats less tables in a MTT for PokerStars.
That’s good and bad but mostly just a difference.
As far as the play goes, I have kind of found about the same quality players on both sites.
- FT lets you roll your cursor over your avatar and immediately see your mucked cards for that hand.
-FT has many more low limit sng’s than Stars and Stars low limit sng’s are mainly turbos ( yuck )
-I do like the e-mails Stars will send you concerning wins and such, that way you can figure later and don’t have to keep track.
-Right now FT has easy deposit options where you can use your debit card, but Stars does have a lower deposit minimum.
Overall, I think I like FT a little better, probably because it’s the main site I have been using for the past 3 years, but I have been playing Stars as well and the minute differences aren’t really enough to keep me away from either one.
I guess on a scale of 1-10 I would give FT a 9 and Stars an 8.
One other thing I have discovered that Full Tilt does that Stars doesn’t is let you know exactly what you are playing for in a tourney. Now they let you know if it is a SnG, but as far as the other tournies go, you have to wait until registration closes to find out what you are playing for. Ft on the other hand lets you know how much and the number keeps changing as the entrants escalatre. May not be a big deal to anyone else, but I like to know if I’m getting my moneys worth or not.
I have been deciding for the past two weeks which of these two poker rooms to play on in 2008, usually I only play on one poker room at a time, and remain loyal to that poker room and dont play on any others.
Normally, I play on European/UK Based poker rooms, such as Ladbrokes, PKR, Bet365 etc… however, for 2008 I wanted to play on a poker room that was a world leader and not just a European leader…. Thats when I walked into Poker Stars and Full Tilt, the two worlds largest online poker giants.
I downloaded the two poker rooms and tried them both out on play money, and after weeks of deciding, I found it almost impossible to settle on one of them… So I have decided to put my money were my mouth is and split my bankroll and play on both of them for 2008.
Overall, I think the two poker rooms are too close to call, they both have the pro’s and con’s but I feel that in the future Full Tilt may take the number one spot.
Well, the higher ups at Stars must read this. LOL. I logged into Stars on Friday night ( 12/07/2007 ) and there was a new update to install. I discovered while playing that after you much your cards, you can now roll your cursor over your name and your mucked cards will appear ( in a ghost like image ) . Now if they will only add a couple of other features, I will be happy. I will say that since my last report I have found the play at the .25/.50 PLHE tables to be significantly tighter than FT. Usually you cant’ get a player off a hand on FT until the river ( in which case they just hit LMAO ) but Stars has just seemed to have some more disciplined players. A lot of them are European, I am not sure if that makes a difference or not, just pointing it out.
I play at both these sites regularly and I like them both. The tourneys they offer are far bigger and more lucrative than smaller sites. More bang for the buck if you’re a patient player. It can take 3 or more hours to get into the money sometimes, which is fine by me as I’m in it for the entertainment value almost as much as the reward.
The screen shot’s more creative at Tilt as you can change your screen to many different looks and settings. The avatars are a little corny, but I’ve gotten use to them. I like the fact that you can post your own little pic or avatar on Stars (similar to Bodog).
I actually like the fact that Stars has a lot of lower level turbo games. I think it’s great practice in calculating blinds vs stack size vs hand strength and I think that experience helps me make better decisions when I do get deep in a bigger tourney when the blinds and antes force a lot of action with mediocre hands. They have them for 10, 18, and 45 players. I play these quite frequently when I’m not playing a big tourney. I find the only SnG’s I’ve been playing recently on Tilt are for $26 tokens. Those are the only ones that interest me as MTT are my main preference when playing and Tilt has the best tourneys in the mid-twenties price range.
One newer tourney they’ve been running at Tilt is the Bounty/Knockout tourneys. I love these. You can actually recoup a small portion of your buy-in without actually cashing. Sometimes you can eliminate quite few players along the way while building your stack. It only takes a bigger stack and one bad situation to be eliminated before the money. These tourneys reward good play along the way as you take others out.
As much as I like Tilt, I must say though that I’ve been getting beat like a drum there over the last 6-8 weeks. bad beat after bad beat. It seems like an Ace always flops when I have Kings (of course someone calls a big raise pre-flop with Ace-Rag “sooooted”) and my AA seems to get outdrawn way above the expected 25-30% of the time vs 1 or 2 other players. I’m pretty sure I’m winning less than 50% post-flop with these hands over this stretch. I’ve found the only way to play these two hands is to limp early, hope for a raise an isolate a player with a huge reraise or just put in an over sized raise in middle/late position. Runner runner flushes and straights seem well above average. It’s pretty sick to watch some of the beats that happen to other players as well. I know it’s part of poker and your cards can run good or bad at times. I feel Poker Stars seems a little more realistic in how the cards draw out or how I would expect them to draw out. There are still some pretty sick beats, but it seems like a noticeable difference between the two.
Overall I’m currently enjoying the poker more at Stars than Tilt and have been playing there more often, but I still play both fairly regularly, much to my wife’s annoyance.
FullTilt has something new in the Heads Up Tournament Rooms. At the end of a heads up session, the software now holds both players in the room for a moment and gives both players the choice of a rematch. Heads-UP Players are now given a choice.
umm this is an easy one..
27% rakeback at fulltilt
0% rakeback at pokerstars
PokerStars now has twice the amount of RMP’s as FullTilt and seems to be pulling away in overall market share.