Seven Best Things About Full Tilt Poker Return

After being absent from the poker world for over 16 months, Full Tilt Poker is scheduled to re-open in non-U.S. jurisdictions tomorrow.
In the time since Full Tilt went offline we’ve seen the rise and fall of the Epic Poker Tour, Phil Hellmuth finish second in the WSOP POY race in back-to-back years and the migration of U.S. online poker players to countries where they can still play.
In short: a lot has happened.
It’s been so long and there’s been so much controversy it’s easy to forget what made Full Tilt Poker great in the first place..
Obviously the best thing about Full Tilt Poker’s return is that marked cards players (at least European ones) will finally be getting access to their account balances.
Outside of that here are the seven items that have us excited about the Full Tilt Poker revival.

7. Best Looking Software in Poker

Despite over a year without upgrades there is something timeless about the look of the Full Tilt software..
It’s simple but not boring. It scales well and runs fast. It feels like professional-grade software compared to the amateur offerings from rivals.
Every feature of the software from the very functional lobby to the card animations has been carefully designed.

6. Nosebleed Cash Games

The second coming?

There’s a good chance you don’t actually play the nosebleed high-stakes games on Full Tilt Poker but they are damn fine entertainment.
The actual Full Tilt team has been cut down to Gus Hansen, Tom Dwan and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom but there’s a good chance it won’t take long for players like Dan “jungleman12” Cates, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond and Patrik Antonius to return to the site where they made names for themselves.
The high-stakes games on Full Tilt Poker were legendary and Isildur1 brought the poker world to a standstill when he went on his record-setting multi-million dollar swing in the fall of 2009.
Some of the high-stakes action has since moved to PokerStars but we're guessing that Gus Hansen and Viktor Blom can convince more than a few pros to take a crack at Full Tilt's elite games.
Full Tilt, high-stakes online poker and Rail Heaven will always be synonymous.

5. Best Avatars in Poker

Yeah this one is pretty subjective and we tend to play with avatars hidden.
But ninja, surfer guy and wizard are arguably more famous than some of the former lesser-known red pros on FTP.
After spending some time playing play money over the last week it looks like all the avatars will be returning to FTP.
Remember, Surfer Guy is a calling station.

4. Full Tilt Poker to PokerStars Transfers

The whole Full Tilt situation since Black Friday has been a complete and utter mess.
Countless players have had countless sleepless nights wondering when, and if, they would ever get their money back.

The future is bright.

There is at least one positive to come out of the situation: Full Tilt Poker to PokerStars transfers.
Being able to transfer cash between the two biggest online poker sites in the world is pretty awesome no matter how you look at it.
Want to take a shot at the high-stakes cash games on Full Tilt after binking a tournament score on PokerStars? Done.
Need some extra cash on PokerStars to make SuperNova Elite? Fine. It’s a whole new world.

3. Custom Tables, Lobby and Interface

Despite its signature look, Full Tilt Poker was also one of the easiest poker clients to mod and some players had fantastic custom set-ups.
First of all Full Tilt offers the ability to change the lobby thanks to its configurable widgets.

Matrix Full Tilt table

You can go even more in-depth, however, and completely change the entire Full Tilt experience.
With a little technical know-how it was possible to modify logos, avatars and backgrounds to create awesome custom creations.
Check out our How to Mod Your Full Tilt Poker Client article to see how to customize your Full Tilt client.

2. Rakeback

OK, while it’s true that the traditional affiliate-based rakeback offered by Full Tilt in the past won’t be returning easy cards tricks, the new Edge program has the potential to be lucrative in its own right.
Edge is a pretty simple cash-back program where there are five different status levels including bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond.
Make it to silver and you’ll start earning $1 every week for every 100 Full Tilt points earned. If you make it all the way to diamond status you’ll receive $2.50 for every 100 Full Tilt points earned.
The program is universal so every player has access to it. That’s cash being deposited directly into your account every week.
The end result works out to be 10-25% rakeback and while that’s not as good as the old 27% rakeback, once you add other bonuses into the equation, there are still some good deals to be had on Full Tilt.

1. Rush Poker

Here we go.

The market has been inundated with fast-fold poker games but Rush Poker remains the original, and best, version.
Full Tilt also offers Rush MTTs, which is something the rest of the industry hasn’t quite caught up to yet.
The old Rush On Demand tournaments started when a set number of players had signed up, like a Sit & Go, but players could then register late to create massive prizepools.
The $4.40 On Demand Rush tourney always seemed particularly soft and multi-tabling On Demand tournaments was a create way to crank out FTPs.
It's time to get busy.

The Final Hour

OK, so the title sounds a bit apocalyptic. That's all right; I thought it might help get your attention.
Of course, the final hour of a poker session is less cosmic and certainly less dramatic than it would be in a sci-fi novel or an end-of-the-world movie.
But most players have no idea how dangerous that final hour can be.
More Mistakes and More Grief Than You Can Imagine
Over the years I have watched more players make more mistakes, cost themselves more money and self-inflict more grief during these final 60 or so minutes than you can imagine.
There are psychological reasons for this and if we understand them perhaps we can prevent future occurrences.
I hope you noticed that "we" in the preceding - that's because I include myself in that category of those who've screwed up during the last couple of orbits before cashing out.
This isn't a traditional strategy column, but the issue is deeply strategic.
If you follow my advice it will serve you well in the future, as well as someone whispering in your ear, "Dump those wired jacks after you got raised and the big blind came over the top."
How the Final Hour is Different

In the final hour, the money creeps in.

The final hour in a poker session is different from all others simply because we begin to contemplate, with special poignancy, the state of our bankrolls.
We become acutely aware of just how far behind or ahead we are marked cards.
Of course, we pay attention to stack sizes constantly, but as the sands run down we add a mental footnote:
"Hmmm, I'm down/up X coconuts (or whatever you play for) and only another hour or so to do something about it."
The something has a lot of variations.
If we're down, we think about how to get out on the night. If we're up, about how to either hold on and book a "W" or take down a monster and make it a "session to remember."
There are other, specialized variations, of course, like the guy who sees he needs 18 more chips to fill a rack. Or the one who has 16 greenies and really, really wants to fill that slot.
All are trouble, and all invite you to make stupid decisions.
See if these scenarios don't feel just a tad familiar:

1. You're in the SB, stuck two buy-ins and seething. You've got to meet your bud in a half-hour. You're in middle position. A tight-aggressive player open-raises four BBs. It's folded to you. You think, "Hmm, 6-7o is a hand just made for felting this clown..."
2. You're stuck three buy-ins. The plane is revving up on the runway. You're UTG with JJ. You raise; tight mid-position player re-raises; button goes over the top all-in and you... hmmm, didn't we cover this one already?
3. You're up 20 BBs on the night. You've got the button; a maniacal type raises 3x the BB. The next six players call; you dump your 8-9s 'cause you really don't want to get caught up in a hand that could make you a loser on the evening.
4. You're just about even. You've got pocket fives in mid position. It's folded to you and you fold, even though you can see the next two players on your right getting ready to limp.

In these, and a dozen other plot lines you can imagine or extract from your long-term memory, you have made an awful decision.
And, in each case, you almost certainly would not have played the hand this way if it were not The Final Hour.

Track your records.

In the first two you're unrealistically forcing a hand in the hope you can "get out" on the day.
In the latter two you're playing like a wuss 'cause you're afraid to end up having to go home a loser.
How To Avoid Traps
So how do you stay out of these traps?
There's a bunch of ways, but here's the key: keep long-term, cumulative records.
If you only log wins and losses in individual sessions, it makes you focus on the bottom line for that session only.
But this is silly. This isn't how you keep track of your personal finances.
If you're in business, you couldn't survive this way. There will always be good days and bad ones too.
The stock market jumps 200 points one day and slips 150 the next. Orders are up on Monday and down on Tuesday.
Business booms in the summer but slows down in the winter. But you don't run about like some kind of nut trying to make a profit every day.
You take a long view. Is the market up over a month period? Did I turn a profit in the last quarter, or the fiscal year?

Are you up for the year? For life?

Are You Up for Life?
This is how you should approach poker juice cards.
You want to know if you're up or down, not today, not this week, but over the course of at least several months and, ideally, your life!
If you've been playing a $1-$2 NL game for nine hours and are $400 in the hole, don't even think about "getting even" for that session.
View it in the larger context. Are you ahead or behind that game for the month, the past three months, the year?
If you keep ongoing records you may discover you're ahead a couple of bucks on the year, even with the $400 hit.
So there's no reason to start steaming in order to get even. You already are!
Same logic applies when you're ahead. If you're up $470, you do not need to do something intensely stupid to try to pick up a $30 pot to fill the rack.
In fact, forget the 20-chips-per-stack gimmick. Stick your chips in the rack in uneven stacks and let the cashier count it out.
If you've got $2,425 in green chips and absofreakin'lutely have to have a full rack, buy three more from the dealer, take those Jacks, dig a hole and toss 'em in.
OK, this makes sense and it's simple. Right?
Well, yes and no.
It turns out we also need to look more closely at those words "win" and "lose."
In a later article I'm going to argue they often involve more than just money; there's a psychological coin to be factored in. Join me then.

Handling Stress in the Poker Wars Part 2

Recently we looked at frustration and stress and their physiological and psychological impacts on us - in particular when our poker lives don't go quite as we'd like them to.
My focus was on different reactions to stress and some simple tricks to cope with it.
Here, I want to take a longer look at stress and the emotions that accompany it, and delve deeper into what goes on inside your mind and body at the poker table.
Yeah, I know, I know; it's the ol' professor bit again. Sorry, I can't help myself. But hang in with me here. You may learn something to help your game.
Let's start with two key points:
1. Stress isn't necessarily bad, it's just another emotion.
2. You can feel very different emotions from the same amount of stress.
I know, those sound so bloody cryptic, but don't you dare move the mouse toward the "back" button.
The story isn't that complicated, and it'll give you new ways to understand our game and new insight into why some of you may be better marked cards players than your peers in some cases but not in others.
Stress isn't necessarily bad, it's just another emotion.
As we noted before, the research shows that continuous high levels of stress are bad for you. However, things are a tad more complex than that.
There are times when stress is an important motivator. If it's high enough, people can do things unimaginable in "ordinary" situations.
Parents have ripped open the doors of flaming cars to rescue trapped children - and only later realized that they did it on a broken leg.
When the emotional levels get high enough, they can spur us on to do the most remarkable and wonderful things.

When emotional levels get high, strange things can happen.

But, on the other hand, do you want someone in the same state doing brain surgery on you?
Not me, baby. I want someone really stoked if my kid is in a burning auto. If she's wielding the surgeon's blade, I want her cool and calm.
And vice versa: The calm, relaxed demeanor the surgeon needs isn't worth much with a flaming wreck in an intersection.
To make this point clear, imagine it's the surgeon's kid in the burning car.
Adopt the Goldilocks Approach
In psychology these things are called "interactions."
How stress affects you depends upon (or "interacts" with) other things, like what task is before you.
The interaction between stress and the difficulty of the task has been known for a century and is called the Yerkes-Dodson law, after the two psychologists who did the early research.
Is there any advice buried here? Sure. Adopt the "Goldilocks" approach.
Like the heroine in the child's story you need to try to get everything "just right:" not too hot, not too cold, not to soft, not too hard.
If you're cranked, hyper-stoked, on a permanent adrenaline rush, your thinking is going to suck.
Conversely, if you sit there like a sick toad with no motivation to get involved, you'll be lacking appropriate aggression.
First related thought:
Ever wonder about good $5/$10 players who complain that they can't beat the $1/$2 game?

Whiners gonna whine.

Their stress levels are probably too low. Not enough pressure. They don't care.
Oh, they'll whine about one-outer easy cards tricks suck-outs and bluff-proof calling stations, but that's not the real reason.
They know what adjustments they need to make but for the most part, they just don't care enough. Surgeons in a rescue operation.
Second thought:
Ever wonder why winning $5/$10 players get smacked around when they move up to $10/$25?
Likely their stress levels are too high. Too much pressure. They care too much.
Of course they'll bitch about guys calling raises with 4-3s or moan about how lucky their opponents are, but again, they know how the game is played at this level.
The problem is that their emotions are cranked too high. Rescue workers doing surgery.
Fascinatingly, it can be the same player in both scenarios.
His knowledge of the game is the same. His decision-making ability hasn't changed.
If you asked, he could explain the strategic adjustments needed but, alas, he can't pull it off. He's lost the Goldilocks touch.
You can feel very different emotions from the same amount of stress.
Remember that experiment we discussed in that previous column?
If not, here's a quick refresher: People were given what they thought was a new drug to improve their memories. It wasn't (alas, there is no such drug); it was adrenaline.
Some waited in a room with a very funny and crazy character who told jokes, played games and generally had a ball; others were put in a room with an angry, depressed person who bitched and complained about everything.

Find the "just right" stress level.

Later, those in the room with the class clown were in a terrific mood and, interestingly, didn't think there were any side effects.
The others were depressed, anxious and reported a host of unpleasant side effects.
Same drug, dose and physiology. Different environments, different interpretations.
Simple Lesson for Poker Junkies
There's a simple but largely unappreciated lesson here for us poker junkies.
Your interpretation of your emotional state is as important as the emotions themselves.
Imagine you've traveled half way around the world to play with over a thousand others for a million-dollar prize; or made your pilgrimage to Vegas for the WSOP; or gotten an invite to an underground club in The Big Apple - the one where "KGB" sits in his undershirt waiting for you.
Me? Been there, done that and have always found myself with seriously heightened emotions.
Sometimes I felt upbeat, with a sense of anticipation, a desire to get in the game, a feeling that was so strong I could almost roll it around on my tongue.
Other times I was less sanguine about my prospects, experienced anxiety, a sense of dread - a quiet voice whispering "You're out of your league, sucker."
I'll bet you a rack of reds that I and the rest of you rubes out there have done better when we've managed to view the emotional arousal in a positive vein.
Remember Goldilocks
Poker advice: The next time you unrack your chips with a bunch of blood-sucking pros or find three "bracelets" at your table, remember Goldilocks.
It isn't anxiety or terror, the adrenaline rush is not a disguised death wish.
It's anticipation; you're energized, alert, mentally focused and as sharp as any surgeon.