- Full Tilt shut down on Thursday, February 25, marking 16 years of operation
- The website was one of the oldest and was one of the first homes to numerous poker professionals, including Phil Ivey, Erick Lindgren, Gus Hansen, and others
- PokerStars bailed Full Tilt Poker in 2016 but decided to discontinue the website after the merger with Flutter Entertainment
Following 16 years in business, Full Tilt Poker was finally retired by PokerStars on February 25, relocating consumers to its flagship product instead.
PokerStars Bids Full Tilt Poker Farewell
Full Tilt’s final day has come. After 16 years in business, PokerStars finally pulled the plug on the pioneering online card room, shifting its database to the PokerStars platform instead. The website’s story goes back to poker’s Black Friday, the day when UIEGA suspended all online gaming platforms in the United States, with a particular focus on poker, setting progress back years.
Yet, The Stars Group, which merged with Flutter Entertainment last year, saw potential, and the company purchased Full Tilt Poker, despite threats of litigation in certain states that haunted the platform to its final hour.
While Full Tilt has been a perpetual source of inspiration, The Stars Group has decided to move everything under the same roof, shifting players from the card room to its PokerStars Network, which is arguably the largest network worldwide.
Over 16 Years in Business, Minus the Roadblocks
Full Tilt Poker goes back to 2004 when players first started joining the platform. TiltWare was the website’s owner at the time. Many big names started by playing at Full Tilt, giving those players the means to compete and the raw training sessions they needed to consolidate their understanding of the game.
Gus Hansen, John Juanda, Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman, Phil Gordon, and Erick Lindgren are just some of the game’s most prominent names that graced Full Tilt with their presence. Interest in the platform surged not just because of its reputation as a hotbed for professional players.
Rather, Full Tilt was one of the few places to play online. However, the US Department of Justice, which stepped in on April 15, 2011, obliterated online poker in the country and hit PokerStars, Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker, and others in rapid succession.
Caught in a corner, PokerStars knew that its only way out is to start working with the government, a process that took many years. For example, the company’s founder, Isai Scheinberg, only settled the case against him as founder last September.
PokerStars’ Flutter Deal Changes Everything
The rest, though, decided to just wing it and admit defeat. Full Tilt was the one to catch PokerStars’ eye. Recognizing its potential and notwithstanding the platform’s mild semblance to a Ponzi scheme, PokerStars decided to buy it out and did in 2016, offering the company a proper road to redemption.
Full Tilt had chugged along quietly in the background, but when the merger between The Stars Group and Flutter Entertainment, which cost $6 billion, was finally completed, PokerStars decided to let-go of Full Tilt as a result.
This happened yesterday, with February 25 to go down in the history books as the day when Full Tilt Poker finally stood still.
