If you'd like to play a game of Texas Holdem or Omaha against people who make a living off playing cards (professionals), and test your knowledge of the game against some top poker players, Full Tilt Poker is where you should head to. Oh, and did I mention Full Tilt accepts US players?

This poker room has acquired a nice team of professional players to help promote the site. Chris Ferguson, Clonie Gowen, Howard Lederer, and Phil Ivey - among others – will pop in for a tourney or a regular ring game every now and then. What other poker room gives you such opportunities?

Full Tilt Poker is one of the safest poker rooms on the internet - financially speaking – thus you'll be able to rest assured your money is in good hands. If you were considering collusion or any other means of fraud however, you should stay well clear of this room. They have zero tolerance against any kind of fraud. The 128-bit encryption will make sure your money matters are perfectly safe from hackers, and the hand history and chat log verifications Full Tilt runs, will certainly deter any unfair attempts for player collusion.

The software Full Tilt uses, is an in-house creation (they're not the skin of any large poker network) and it's a pretty successful one at that too. It's one of the funniest pieces of poker software you'll ever see in just about any poker room on the web. Players can pick personalized avatars in the shape of goofy cartoon characters, and what's more, they can use these avatars to reflect four kinds of emotions through them. No need for smileys here. Your monkey, shark or Chihuahua will smile, frown and look desperate at the click of a mouse-button. It is true that generally, you want to convey as little information about your emotions as possible in a poker game, but this feature is just too cute and funny to ignore.

The software itself is very stable an reliable, and (even though I tested it using a High Speed connection) I see no reason why it should act funny with slower connections. Simple and functional are the key-words in this respect.

Traffic-wise Full Tilt used to be a modest little poker room, and so it stayed right up to the passing of the UIGEA in 2006. Most of the major online poker rooms controlling huge percentages of US players have closed their doors (or rather servers) to Americans, and Full Tilt took full advantage of the situation. They decided they'd still accept US players and nowadays they boast a whooping number of 30,000 players online in peak hours, and the title of one of the best poker rooms in the world.

Now, for the most important thing: fish rating. In the early days, going at Full Tilt was about as tough as it gets. There were no loose tables around, and making money was just too difficult and tedious a thing to do.

With the demise of Party Poker, as the biggest online poker destination for American players, a flood of fish hit Full Tilt, with an impact that can be felt to this very day. The game has generally loosened up a bit, and even if you don't find a resident maniac at each table, there are still quite a lot of weak players you can profit from.

I'd say, fish-wise Full Tilt is an average poker room.
Full Tilt offers a sizeable first deposit bonus (a match of 100% up to $600) and the good thing about it is, that you need no bonus code to qualify for it. No need to click around different affiliates' sites, all you need to do is deposit and automatically receive the bonus. The release of the bonus will be done according to how many FullTilt Points you earn ( by playing raked hands) in increments of 10% at a time.

Back in the days, it was insanely hard to clear the bonus at Full Tilt, nowadays, however, you can release as much as $18 on every 100 hands played.

There is 24/7 email support at Full Tilt poker, however, I didn't contact them to see how fast they'd reply.

As payment methods, they support Neteller, Firepay, Mastercard, and Epassporte. Money transfer is as safe and smooth as it gets.

Final conclusion: definitely a room where US players can still benefit from the high level of service they've been denied by other leading poker rooms.