Summary:   B
Full Tilt is a relative newcomer to the online poker scene, but has made a real splash with high-profile endorsements from several big-name professionals, including Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Mike Matusow, and Jennifer Harman.  There are ample opportunities to play against these pros, even at the low-to-middle limits.  Full Tilt offers a nice selection of no-limit tables and tournaments (and seems to have made a concerted effort to hitch their wagon to this year’s World Series of Poker, offering daily qualifiers.)  We hope to see more traffic at their higher-stakes limit games, which are sometimes only sparsely populated.  Their software can be a tad slow, and the table aesthetics aren’t the slickest around, but we have high hopes for this site: they have a lot of well-known professionals in their bullpen, and their sign-up bonus for Law School Poker readers (see below) is one of the more generous around.

Sign-up Bonus
Full Tilt has provided Law School Poker with a customized sign-up bonus code for our readers.  Enter FTPLAW in the “Bonus Code” field in Full Tilt’s new account setup window, and receive a 100% match of your first deposit up to $600 in bonus money. See detailed instructions for this bonus on our Law School Poker Bonus Codes page.

Software:  B
The poker professionals promoting Full Tilt allegedly helped in the design of the software and table layout.  The table graphics and characters are on the ‘cartoony’ side (we’re pretty sure they’re the only site online where you can choose to be represented at the table by a Geico-style gecko), and the floor and background patterns are a tad distracting.  If you can get past the aesthetic shortcomings, though, the lobby layout and button placement is actually rather intuitive and user-friendly.  Some players report that the Full Tilt software is somewhat resource-intensive and subject to occasional slowdowns, especially on older machines, but we have not noticed it to be too much of a problem.

Caliber of competition:   B
The cash games at Full Tilt are a little tighter than elsewhere, especially the mid-to-high stakes limit hold’em tables.  Two tips for finding softer games there: i) all of the lower-limit games, especially on the no-limit side, are populated by rather poor players, and ii) try to nab a seat at a low- or middle-limit table where a pro is seated and watch the fun; these tables seem to be a breeding ground for a lot of dubious poker play, as amateurs try anything and everything they can to win a few pots from a poker pro.  The games should soften up considerably, however, as the site attracts more and more players to its middle and higher stakes games.

Customer service:   A -
We have been impressed with Full Tilt’s customer support team – they answered emails clearly and politely, and generally as promptly as any other site out there, often in as little as 15 to 20 minutes.  Our cashouts were a little on the slow side, a relatively minor annoyance.  We hope this quickly-growing site adds phone support soon, which is unfortunately rare among online poker rooms.