Full Tilt Loses 15% Of Traffic One Week After Dramatic Changes

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Friday, August 7th, 2015 | Written by Stephen Smith

At the end of July, Full Tilt announced a series of sweeping changes designed to make its cash games more attractive to recreational players. One week later, and the impact on the online poker room’s traffic has already proved dramatic, but unfortunately not in a positive way, as numbers have dropped off by a huge 15% to their present level of 800 players over a seven-day period (PokerScout). While it’s too soon to predict the long term impact the changes will have, early indications suggests Full Tilt may have made a number of miscalculations by completely distancing itself from its former position at the center of the nose bleed cash game stakes.

No Table Selection, No High Stakes

In 2009, Patrik Antonius and “Isildur1” set a record for online poker’s biggest ever pot of $1,356,947 during a game of $500/1,000 PLO on Full Tilt. Even a few days before Full Tilt made its recent changes, Phil Ivey won around $200,000 playing 2-7 Triple Draw at the $2000/$4000 levels, but now the highest stakes available are $10/$20 for No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha, and $15/$30 for Fixed Limit Hold’em. Equally striking was the site’s complete elimination of seat selection, a move Full Tilt Managing Director Dominic Mansour acknowledged could upset those online grinders who relied heavily on these options to remain profitable in the game. As Mansour explained at the time:

“We also recognize that in the past, a proportion of players have used extensive table selection to their advantage and that those players might not like these changes. Their advantage over other players will now be negated and we don’t think that’s a bad thing. Good things happen to those who play and we believe the changes we’re making will see even more good things happening to more players at Full Tilt.”

Restricted Multi-Tabling, No Heads-Up

A six games at the same stakes restriction imposed on multi-tablers has likely contributed significantly to the recent drop off in traffic, as these players have traditionally driven a high percentage of traffic at online poker rooms. This in turn suggests the 15% decline in numbers may predominantly be accounted for by a relatively smaller percentage of players, which perhaps suggests the latest numbers may not be quite as bad as first appears. In addition, the elimination of heads-up games from Full Tilt would have resulted in a number of HU specialist abandoning the site in favor of other poker rooms offering the format.

Aiming For Long Term Growth

While the situation should become clearer over the next few weeks, Full Tilt Poker Room Manager Shyam Markus already considered mistakes may have been made whilst implementing its drastic new overhaul, and addressing the poker community on the Two Plus Two forums, he wrote:

“It’s not going to be a super popular decision, and it’s absolutely possible we’ve made a mistake. But for now it’s the decision we feel has the best chance of helping to turn around some of the biggest problems we face and return to growing the site.”

Nevertheless, the online poker industry has declined steadily since Black Friday, not just because the majority of US players have now been shut out of the international market, but also because a growing number of highly skilled pros have scared most of the recreational players away from the online arena. Therefore, a new approach to the game originally pioneered by Bodog and now adopted by Full Tilt probably represents the best way forward for improving the experience of recreational players, and creating a balance between amateurs and professionals. This in turn should help the game to survive and prosper.

Players Have Their Say

In the meantime, here are a few reactions coming from players following Full Tilt’s move to becoming a recreational centric online poker room:

Against

Jean-Robert Bellande

“Dear @FullTiltPoker, please turn the 10-game mix, Badugi, and NL2-7 games back on. These games bring me and everyone I lose to so much joy.. I don’t think I’ll be traveling to play on-line anymore. @FullTiltPoker has eliminated all the fun #brokenjoy”

jspill

“@FullTiltPoker the final chapter”

Kim Lund

“To new players you’re selling USPs they don’t naturally understand. To old players you have to sell USPs that will upset existing players.”

deathorglory0

“There were plenty other suggestions to improve the HU lobby, to just remove HU without trying out any of these suggestions is inexcusable.”

For

Roger Mainfield

“Probably good changes. Full tilt might be the most well known of the sites that are taking a proactive stance to protecting game quality.”

MilkMan

“Headsup should probably never have been offered on any site imo. Although at Nosebleeds it did serve as a good marketing tool with some of the high profile matches.”

sparky999

“These changes aren’t directed at attracting new players per se, this is about creating an environment they will get a better experience from. The changes that will attract and retain the new players are yet to come.”

KptBomba

“Well the truth is that their numbers were declining extremely fast and this year it is even worse industry wise. The game is dying. So I appreciate someone trying something even if I don’t agree with some/many changes. The reality is they could either do money grab and just watch their site going completely dead or put a fight and try something. Besides even if it doesn’t work ou,t some changes will turn out to be good. So Amaya/stars will be able to use the data from it and replicate it on Stars. I mean where do you expect them to test new things if not on FTP???”