Common Questions About Full Tilt Rakeback

Every day, thousands of new players make accounts of Full Tilt Poker. And, every day, most of them make a critical mistake that will cost them thousands of dollars over the life of their account – they sign up without getting rakeback.

Use the Quick Links below to learn more about Full Tilt Poker and rake back at Full Tilt.

Rakeback-related questions:
> What is rakeback?
> How much can I earn with rakeback?
> How do I sign up? Can’t I just sign up at Full Tilt?
> What’s the catch?
> Do I need a rakeback code to get rake back at FullTilt?
> Can I get Rush Poker mobile rakeback?

Full Tilt Poker general questions:
> Why should I play at Full Tilt Poker?
> What are multi-entry tournaments at Full Tilt?
> How does Run it Twice work on Full Tilt Poker?
> Does Full Tilt Have Draw Games?
> How does Tournament Deal Making on Full Tilt Poker Work?
> How did Full Tilt Poker get started?

Rakeback-related Questions

What is rakeback?
In cash games, the room takes a little money out of each pot dealt, called the rake. For tournaments, the rake is the entry fee (so, for a $25+2 tournament, the +2 is the rake). Rakeback is when the rooms refund part of the rake you pay back to you. It is a promotional tool rooms use to attract and retain players.

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How much can I earn with FullTilt rakeback?
Full Tilt Poker offers players 27% rakeback. Let’s say you play a few tournaments a week. You probably total a hundred or two in fees a month, or a couple thousand a year. With rakeback, you’d be getting hundreds of that back a year.

If you play cash games, the effect is even greater. Let’s say you play $1/2 no limit, and that you play 10 hours or so a week. At Full Tilt, you’d earn over a thousand dollars in rakeback in a year – or five full extra buy ins.

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How do I sign up?
You can’t sign up at Full Tilt directly and get rakeback – otherwise they’d have to give it to everyone. Instead, FTP offers rakeback through pages like ours. Signing up is simple – just use this quick form here.

What’s the catch?
There isn’t one. You still qualify for deposit bonuses, all promotions, everything. Your rakeback payment is made directly into your FTP account every week. You can track how much you’ve earned every day. If you open an account on FTP without rakeback, you can’t change your mind later. The room won’t switch your account and setting up a second account is against the rules of the site.

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Do I Need a Full Tilt Rakeback Code to get Rakeback?
No. There is no need for a Full Tilt Rakeback Code to get rakeback at Full tilt. You simply need to complete the sign up process above and your account will be properly tagged for rakeback. A Full Tilt Rakeback Code is not required to get rakeback.

What are Full Tilt Rakeback Codes for? There’s actually no such thing – it’s a marketing tool people use. You do not need to use any special code, a Full Tilt Rakeback Code or otherwise, to get rakeback or to qualify for the deposit bonus at Full Tilt. As long as you use the above sign up process, you don’t have to worry about using a bonus code, a referral code, a Full Tilt Rakeback Code or any sort of code – your account will be tracked properly and you will receive the full rakeback rate and deposit bonus available from FTP.

If that’s the case, why do we provide a code? We provide a code (PTP) only because some people don’t feel confident that they’ll get rakeback if they sign up without one, but don’t believe people who say you have to use their code to get rakeback – there is no magic Full Tilt rakeback code, and you can sign up for rakeback at Full Tilt via any affiliate (such as PTP) that offers it.

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Can I get Rakeback playing Rush Poker mobile?
Full Tilt recently released a beta version of Rush Poker for mobile devices. Now you can be earning rakeback and grinding a ton of hands even when you’re away from your computer with the awesome combo of Full Tilt Rakeback and Rush Poker mobile.

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Questions about Full Tilt Poker

Why should I play on Full Tilt Poker?
Full Tilt Poker offers players one of the best values online. You can earn a variety of deposit bonuses and also participate in periodic FTP promotions such as Take 2, Iron Man, Happy Hour, FTOPS, Full Tilt Academy Challenges and more while still earning your rakeback.

FTP has a massive lobby that supports ring games and tournaments of almost all popular limits. No limit cash players will find tons of options from micro stakes all the way up to the nosebleeds. Pot Limit Omaha players will also find a variety of options at low to mid stakes, and FTP is famous for its high-stakes PLO options.

Tournament players have their pick of a variety of SNG formats, along with a bustling tournament lobby that offers tons of guaranteed prize pools and buy ins ranging from free to the weekly 1k on FTP. Tournament players will also be interested in the Full Tilt Online Poker Series, a regular online tournament championship series that runs several times a year and awards hundreds of thousands in guaranteed prize money.

Read our full review of Full Tilt Poker.

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What is run it twice on FTP?
When playing cash games live, sometimes, players want to run pots more than once when they get all-in, as a variance reducer, primarily. This means that two boards are ran from the point the all-in happens; if you get all-in on the flop, two turns and two rivers are produced, and the pot is split amongst both boards; if you win half, you get half the pot. Sometimes, this process is done more than twice; pots can be split up thrice or more as well, if they players agree on the split; usually, the bigger the pot means to someone, the more likely they’ll be willing to do the multiple splits.

Until recently, online cash games were not the places to run it twice; once you got all-in, the pot ran out one time, and variance stayed as high as it normally would; FTP has now introduced the ability to Run It Twice as well, however. There are no multiple runs aside from twice, however, so be warned before using it and expecting a four time running. It also is unavailable for tournaments, which may be a surprise to a few people who generally use it in home game tournaments, as well; this is a cash game only option.

A final important note; there is a charge associated with the Run It Twice option! The maximum rake on cash pots in FTP is $3; if you choose to Run It Twice in a pot, however, the maximum rake is increased to $4! While the higher stakes players may not directly notices this extra $1 in variance, in smaller stakes games, that extra $1 being taken out from every twice ran pot can hurt long term profits if playing tables that have a lot of all-ins; be aware of the extra charge before you begin using it normally!

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How do Multi Entry tournaments work on FTP?
Multi-entry tournament on Full Tilt are a neat innovation recently rolled out by the room. Instead of only being able to play one entry at a time, in these multi entry tournaments you can actually play multiple entries at the same time.

Neat, right? In a lot of ways it’s a logical extension of Rush Poker, where you have the ability to occupy multiple spaces in the player pool. Just like with Rush poker, you can never be seated at the same table as “yourself” in multi-entry tournaments.

You do earn rakeback on mult-entry tournaments, the same way that you’d earn rakeback on any standard tournament on Full Tilt Poker. If you signed up for rakeback, you get it on any real-money tournament that charges an entry fee.

Multi-entry tournaments on Full Tilt Poker are both a part of the regular MTT schedule and also a part of the FTOPS tournament schedule on FTP.

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How About Draw Poker on FTP?
Up until recently, there were not a lot of variants available to players on FTP; it was generally stud, hold’em, and omaha, and that was it. Now, FTP has really been pushing their draw poker games, and players now have five different variations of draw poker to select and play from the menu, including the additions in new variations of 8, 9 and 10 Game rotation tables and tournaments.

In the basic lobby, click on the “draw” tab when looking at games in the menu, and the five new variations will pop up. 5-Card Draw is recognized by old school card players; it’s one draw and best 5 card high hand wins the pot. 2-7 Triple Draw is a three draw, five card game in which you attempt to make the worst hand possible; 2-3-4-5-7 is the technical nut hand in this game. 2-7 Single Draw is the same concept, with only a single draw to use. A-5 Triple Draw is the same as 2-7, except straights and flushes are ignored, meaning A-2-3-4-5 is now the best possible hand. And Badugi is a quirky asian game in which the best non-suited hand, meaning all four suits have to be in your hand to have a 4-card qualifying hand, wins the pot. An A-2-3-4 all of different suits would be the nut hand in this draw version.

These versions also have multiple options for limit variations, with some of the games having both limit and no limit versions, and 5-Card Draw having all three of the common variations (NL, PL, and L) available to choose from. Again, these variants are being included in tournaments as well; including in FTOPS tournaments, so it may help to start brushing up on your draw poker soon if you want to earn an FTOPS jersey in one of these tournaments!

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Tournament Deal Making on FTP
The deal making process in tournaments can be a complicated mess of asking players to deal, setting up money payouts, and other things that make the entire process a chore. Luckily, FTP has developed a system of making deals that makes the entire process much more streamlined and easier to manage than your standard fare.

When you make the final table of a tournament or sit and go on FTP, an option will appear on the lower left hand corner of the screen that allows you to click on “Make A Deal” and tells you the amount of players that have agreed to make a deal; the entire table must be in agreement to attempt to make a deal before you will actually be able to go into the deal making interface. Once the entire table has agreed to make a deal, a new screen will pop up, based on the game you’re playing. If the game you’re playing is flop based, has a moving button, or has a flop section in it in mixed games, the player that would be the button next is given control of the deal. If it is stud, the fixed button will be in control.

Once you get to the system, you can always pass up control of the deal process to one of the other players; the button of the same name is in the deal process, and allows you to select a player to take over; there may have been a player that had been warranting setting up the deal, so you may want to let him do it. Once the deal is set up, if everyone accepts, the deal is made! The next time you want to make a deal on FTP, make sure you try out the new Automatic Deal system, only on FTP.

When making deals using the new Automatic Deals function on FTP, there are a few different ways you can actually make the deal that should be discussed prior to making them one of which was even engineered by none other than Chris “Jesus” Ferguson to be more fair and even for shorter stacks in the calculations. The three types of deals are ICM, Chip Chops, and custom deals, and we’ll discuss them all briefly.

The easiest to explain is a custom deal; when you selct this deal, you plug in the amounts you choose to allocate to each player, until all of the prize pool is distributed to players and/or the remaining prize pool. Once all of the funds have been distributed, all players choose to accept or decline the deal.

The ICM model, in brief terms, takes the amount of chips that you have, and determines the likelihood of you coming in each position in the tournament. It gives you a percentage of the prize pool based on where you would theoretically finish, and does the same for everyone else, then divides out the prize pool accordingly. It’s quite complicated, but it’s the fairest and most technically accurate of the methods for making a deal.

The chip ratio method takes the amount of chips you have in the tournament and makes a direct ratio between chips and cash, giving you your “value” in chips on the tournament. The problem with this, however, is when you’re severely short stacked in the tournament; you’ll get a very small amount, maybe even less than your buy-in, when you choose this method normally. The “Jesus” algorithm that FTP uses gives more to the super short stacks, helping keep things fair and balanced.

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How did Full Tilt Poker get started?

Full Tilt Poker has been one of the industry leader’s in online poker since it’s grand opening in 2004, when some of the top mind’s in poker came together and made a site “for the players, by the players” that has turned into the leader in cutting edge, innovative tournaments and game variety on the net. But to understand FTP as a whole, it helps to take a look at where it started and the road it’s taken to get where it stands today, as the number two online poker site to PokerStars in terms of traffic and arguably the home of nosebleed cash game poker on the web.

In 2004, Tiltware, LLC (now no longer in existence) started FTP with a $5 million investment between 9 poker pros, Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, John Juanda, Andy Bloch, Erick Lindgren, Phil Gordon, and Clonie Gowen. They had a common goal in mind; to make a poker site that was by the players, for the players, and at the start, an aggressive marketing campaign featuring the many big name pros had the players flocking to the site. They boasted big sign-up bonuses, the ability to play with pros in tournaments in cash games and tournaments (the so-called “red name” pros you see today) and the prestige that came with the software, graphics, and players, and these perks quickly boosted FTP into the forefront of the now booming online poker industry; it would take another 3 years for FTP to take over the number 2 slot in online poker rooms, but to go from nothing to a top tier room so quickly was a huge boon for FTP.

With traffic came a few quick redesigns for the graphics and controls on the site. FTP decided to stay true to their player-centric style and listened to player concerns about problems with the interface and made modifications to try to make the process of playing online poker more streamlined. Through the history of FTP, they’ve made many innovative changes to their tournaments, cash games, and sit and gos that have helped keep them a leader in innovation, from personal tables for pros and high earning point players, to increasing stakes available on site upon request. They pioneered Matrix sit and gos, Rush Poker, and the newest innovation, the Multi Entry Tournament.

2006 was a year of change at FTP for reasons not related to software changes, as the UIGEA that came into effect during the Bush era made holding assets for gambling sites illegal and prevented financial institutions in the United States from processing transactions from these sites. This caused many sites, such as PartyPoker and Interpoker to flee the U.S. soil for European shores only, fearing seizure and shutdown by the U.S. government if they kept their sites online. To give you an example of how damaging the UIGEA was to the sites the left, look at the stock price of PartyPoker during the 24 hour period after UIGEA passed and Party announced it was leaving the United States; it dropped a full 60% in stock price of its shares in a single day. FTP, however, decided to stick with the United States and continued to offer play, which proved to be a major turning point in the popularity contest between the online sites. Players that no longer could play on Party or Inter were turning to FTP as their go to site for cash games, and by 2007, FTP had rocketed to number 2 on the traffic list for online sites, thanks in large part to the absence of many of their former competitors.

2006 also brought about the first of what has become a seasonal staple for the site; the FTOPS series of tournaments. Giving each of the pros on site a chance to host their own tournament and offering huge guarantees of over $2 million in cash for the first series, this premier online tournament circuit was the first major step FTP took to establish credibility in the online tournament realm, which had previously been dominated by PokerStars and their stable of recent WSOP champs signed to their roster. The FTOPS has now ran 18 times, with the main event offering a first prize that has jumped from $161,480 in August of ‘06 to $423,057.41 in August of ‘10. It doesn’t hurt that a number of established pros have won the Main Event, including Alec Torelli and Zack Clark.

2007 brought the first WSOP title to FTP during its existence, as Jerry Yang won the big one and became a “friend” of FTP, giving them a new WSOP champ on site for the first time since the Moneymaker boom. Unlike PokerStars, however, the new champion did not become a “pro” on the site, instead becoming a friend of the site, which was a bit shocking; for years, FTP had been seeking a WSOP Main Event winner, and when they got it, they were unable to get a pro out of the deal. Jerry Yang, however, wasn’t a full time poker player before the Main Event and hasn’t done much in the realm since, so FTP’s reluctance to bestow pro status on their newly minted champion was a case of hindsight sparing them many questions about the lack of success their pro has had since the win, something that PokerStars frequently must deal with when referring to pros like Chris Moneymaker and Joe Cada, who have little to show, tournament wise, after their Main Event victories.

2007 also started one of FTP’s biggest contributions to the general poker world; NBC’s Poker After Dark, one of the few poker shows on TV, along with ESPN’s WSOP coverage and GSN’s High Stakes Poker, that has stood the test of time as a quality, reliable poker show that included tournaments and cash games, as well as a who’s who in the poker world from many different sites and even celebrities, foreign players, and Internet phenoms. With 6 seasons under its belt and a seventh season underway, Poker After Dark looks to remain as FTP’s primary televised source of advertising; some other attempts to get FTP on American TV, like Face The Ace, have fared much poorer and have struggled to garner more than a seasons worth of episodes per show.

Getting a top online poker site isn’t always easy, though, and a number of lawsuits and complaints have been lodged over the years, including lawsuits from former employees and players that were accused of multi-accounting or using bots without merit. The most shocking and surprising of the lawsuits, however, came from one of the original red pros at FTP, Clonie Gowen, who was allegedly cheated out of her 1% ownership in FTP in return for promoting and marketing the brand. After a six month legal battle and countless exchanges between the two parties, Clonie Gowen’s case was thrown out of court on April 27th, 2009, severing the ties between the two and marking the first and only member or Team Full Tilt to leave the company.

FTP has also made sure to stay at the forefront of cutting edge poker variants and tournament style, adding the polarizing “Rush Poker” to their variations of games in 2010 and “Multi-Entry” tournaments in 2011, both controversial in their own way, but well received by the online poker community nonetheless. FTP also currently has the biggest cash games running of any of the major poker sites, running games as high as $3,000/$6,000 limit and $500/$1,000 no limit/pot limit. This keeps FTP generating buzz surrounding the explosive stable of cash game specialists they keep on the stable, including the newest red pros Patrik Antonius and Tom “durrrr” Dwan, a sign of the changing of the guard on the site from tournament specialists in its inception to cash game and all around pros currently.

Where does that leave FTP at for the future? They have been aggressively signing a younger contingent of players, including the recent signing of Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad, a nice steal from her old site at BetFair Poker. This lean towards youth also signals a more player friendly atmosphere at FTP, including the addition of $3,000/$6,000 tables via a request by a non FTP player, “IHateJuice” (now Kagome Kagome) to play against Phil Ivey. This also signals more interaction by FTP red players and pros; PokerStars has recently let its players know that their packages for playing on the site and in tournaments has been significantly decreased, raising the likelihood that player activity among their stable will decrease and a player exodus may be forthcoming, starting with former WSOP champion Greg Raymer’s departure from the site. If other top PS pros follow suit, FTP may be setting itself up to snatch some of these pros away, unless PS makes departing players sign a “no compete” clause against FTP for leaving early. Is this the year that FTP jumps ahead of PS and takes over as the number 1 online poker site? It’s going to be a very interesting year for FTP, indeed.

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