Hold Em Authority - Texas Hold Em Strategy and advice for all levels of players

I dabbled into the wonderful world of Full Tilt Poker the other night, and let me tell you, I was on more than Full Tilt by the end of the night. I’ll explain why in a little bit, but for right now, let’s get to the nuts and bolts of the site.

Full Tilt Poker is backed by quite a few very prominent poker players, ranging from Chris “Jesus” Ferguson to Phil Ivey to Clonie Gowen.

The site itself is pretty easy to navigate, and a picture of the lobby can be found here.

I’ve included a screenshot of a typical Full Tilt table setup down below.

Full Tilt has one of the best selections of games out there, and they really do promote these games because they feel being a diverse poker player can provide more benefits and opportunities for the poker player down the line. Some of the games include Razz, HOSE (Holdem, Omaha, Stud, Omaha 8/B), and HORSE (R for Razz).

There is a good selection of tournaments on Full Tilt, and the blind structure for these tournaments goes up fairly slow, which is a good thing if you are a tighter player. The increases go from 30/60 to 40/80 to 50/100, so as you can see, the increments are quite small. Full Tilt holds a Sunday evening tournament that guarantees a $200K prize pool - it’s a $200 buyin. Also, a monthly $500K tournament with a buyin of $500 can be found in the middle of every month. Obviously the low stakes are covered, but if you’re more of a high roller, Full Tilt has you covered as well.

I have found it to be true that, on the whole, this site has the sneakiest poker players on the net. What do I mean by that? Well, a lot of the players play just like me - very tight, but aggressive when they’re in a hand. That in itself isn’t very sneaky, but many players on Full Tilt like to trap. They will play AA very quietly so as not to attract attention, but by the end of the hand, they will have all your chips. I was trapped more on Full Tilt this past weekend than I have been in a month on other poker sites.

As for the bonus - it’s hard to beat. You get a Full Tilt Poker Bonus all the way up to $600. Obviously, as with other sites, you have to play on the site to extract the bonus, but if you play break even poker you’ll make a nice amount of money. From the site, this is the amount of money you earn with each raked hand: “For each dollar raked from a pot, every player who was dealt cards for that hand will earn one point. You can earn partial points if less than one dollar is raked, and you can earn up to three points per hand. Each point is worth $.06, so you can earn up to $18 per hundred hands.”

If you’re a beginning poker player, you can definitely learn a lot by playing on this site, but you may lose a lot in the process. However, if you have the discipline to stay at really low stakes and move up the ladded extremely slow, then I think this is the best place for you to play. If you don’t have that discipline, you may want to consider a different site until you either get better or obtain more discipline.

As an intermediate or advanced poker player, I think this is a great site to play at. The players are good enough that tournaments won’t be an all in fest (especially with the good blind structure), and you will always be challenged by those players that try to stay under the radar and then BAM, make a sneaky play on you.

I think that the most vulnerable players on this site are the megalomaniacs, the players that will play any two cards at any time. It seems that any player is willing to execute some sort of trap at any point during a SNG or MTT. If you are one of these players, you might want to tighten up just a bit to make sure you aren’t walking into these traps left and right.

Overall, I say Full Tilt is a must see. Check it out, and as an added bonus for reading all the way to the end of the article, I’ve included a picture of Clonie Gowen that might be of interest for any straight male between the age of 10-90.

This is the first in a series of online poker site reviews, and I chose UltimateBet because it is the site I have the most experience with. These reviews are designed to not only review the site in general, but to give you a sense of how one specific site can cater to your needs much more than another can. For example, some sites’ tournament structures are different than others, and your task is to find which structure you are most comfortable with.

The first thing you’ll notice when you sit down at the tables is the clarity of UltimateBet’s graphics and their smooth animations. The gameplay itself is a very pleasant experience, although losing money still sucks despite the great interface.

An image of the table layout can be found here.

An image of the UB lobby can be found here.

The biggest knock on UB, and one that I have found myself to be a problem, is the customer service. It sucks, and has sucked for a long time. If you have any financial problems on that site, you will have to wait for a long time to get your problems resolved. Email communication is impossible, as emails get returned that are so generic in nature they may as well be automated.

The table games at UltimateBet used to be filled with very tight players, but as time has progressed and this new wave of players have come to the forefront, these tables have become a bit more loose. On the whole, however, I think UltimateBet’s players are still a bit more tight than most of its’ competition. The table game selection is very good, with just about every limit represented, along with a strong selection of no limit games. A knock on UB, however, is the fact that they can’t pull any kind of poker player besides Holdem players. This is reflected in their other games. While their selection is decent, almost no one is making use of those tables.

As for their tournaments, the selection could be better. UB carries far too many satellites and turbo tournaments, offering their players very few opportunities to play in a regular cash tournament. One good thing about UB tournaments, however, is the fact that their blind structure caters to a player like myself. Their blind structure goes up every 12 minutes (every 15 for a $100+ tournament), and the blinds increase at a reasonable rate. I feel like for a tight player, this is the best structure you will find, period. You typically have enough time to pick your spots, and against an aggressive table, that extra time can become very valuable.

UltimateBet’s SNG selection isn’t too bad at all, with 6 and 10 man SNG’s running from $1 to $500 at all times. The structure is very comparable to the MTTs, with the blinds in SNG’s typically going up every 10 minutes. One thing that UB doesn’t have much of, or much interest in for that matter, is Multi-Table SNGs. Their multi-table SNGs end after the $20 level, and very little interest can be created with the MT SNG’s even at the lower levels.

All in all, I really do feel that this is the best site to play if you are a tight poker player. If you can stay away from any problems with the site and find a couple tournaments a day that fit in with your bankroll, I highly recommend giving them a try. They run a 100% first deposit bonus, but unfortunately, the way they run their bonus dollars program is a bit absurd. Even so, I still think it’s worth a shot, and if as a tight player you still don’t like it, I think Full Tilt might not be a bad call. That will be the next in a long line of poker room reviews coming at you in the near future.