Full Tilt Introduces New Software Featuring Synchronized Breaks

If you’re an avid follower of Full Tilt Poker, then you know that the site recently unleashed brand new software featuring synchronized breaks and games with antes, among other innovations. The new additions have received mixed results from the poker community, which now breaks in unison at five until every hour on the world’s second largest online poker site. Let’s take a look at the new features to Full Tilt Poker and discover what the poker world has been buzzing about.

Across multi-table tournaments on Full Tilt Poker, the site now offers synchronized breaks at 55 minutes past each hour. All hands in progress will stop before the break occurs and play will resume five minutes after the last hand concluded. Although the time that breaks resume will vary slightly by tournament, the aim of the measure by Full Tilt Poker is to afford its players battling on multiple tables a chance to catch their collective breaths, go to the bathroom, grab a snack, refill their beer pitchers, and make a quick phone call. However, if a player also has multi-table tournaments open across other sites like PokerStars and Ultimate Bet, they will not receive any respite from action by these rooms, which have not yet adopted a synchronized break system.

Synchronized breaks on Full Tilt will not occur for tournaments that have late registration available at the time, standard events playing in the first blind level, turbo events in the first two blind levels, and sit and gos with fields of fewer than 30 players. During non-turbo tournaments that allow rebuys and add-ons, a two minute break will be built in when the rebuy period is over. In the case of turbo tournaments that allow rebuys and add-ons, the time period is truncated to just one minute. For rebuy tournaments that do not have add-ons, the end of the rebuy period will see a 30 second pause in action for players to scramble for last-minute rebuys.

Full Tilt Poker also recently rolled out cash games with antes. These are available at the higher-stakes $25/$50 Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Hold’em games for the time being, with the expansion into other limits planned in the future. In a $25/$50 game, the ante is $10 and a special “A” icon in the Full Tilt Poker lobby denotes the new games. The Full Tilt Poker website proudly boasts, “This is the same game type that pros such as Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, and Patrik Antonius play at the Big Game in Las Vegas, or on television shows such as ‘Poker After Dark’ and ‘High Stakes Poker.’” The addition of antes to the blinds in the pot pre-flop means that even more money is up for grabs with every turn of the card.

The USA-friendly online poker site has also added icons to the lobby designating ring game tables as Cap, Deep Stack, Six-Max, Heads-Up, Ante, Speed, and Educational. Ante tables appear with an “A,” Cap tables appear with a “C,” Deep Stack tables appear with an icon similar to a wireless signal strength meter, Educational tables are denoted by an “E,” and Speed games are identified with an “S.” The addition of icons may result in faster surfing of the lobby when selecting games.

Finally, Full Tilt Poker has tweaked its software to allow for faster communication with its home network. Its website explains, “We’ve improved the way the game talks to your computer. If you’ve ever had lag problems in the game or have a slower internet connection, your playing experience should be improved.” In addition, Full Tilt Poker’s beta software is less computer-intensive than its standard counterpart and can be downloaded and utilized by those with slower connections or older computers. Recently, Full Tilt announced that it would cease supporting Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition. The change took place on April 26th.