Full Tilt Poker Adds New Features - Tournament Dollars, Auto Top-Up & More

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Today Full Tilt Poker released an upgrade to their software. They have added many new features that are a significant step forward. Full Tilt has introduced tournament dollars (T$), which replace satellite entries with a currency that is redeemable to play in any tournament, not just the one you won entry into.

This is the same concept that Poker Stars has had in place for years. There will now be tournaments on Full Tilt where the prizes are paid in tournament dollars. You can use tournament dollars to buy in to any multi-table or single-table sit and go tournament.

You can also convert T$ into cash via the cashier in the Full Tilt Poker cashier. The real racket with this is that Full Tilt charges a 5% fee on the conversion to real cash.

To me, this is an outrage. They already took the tournament fee from the buy-in that you spent in the tournament to win the tournament dollars you now want to convert back to cash. This is one more step in a downward direction for the money hungry management at Full Tilt Poker. They took a great step forward, and then tainted it by taking advantage of it and grabbing more money unnecessarily from the players.

Not all is bad however.

In this same upgrade, Full Tilt introduced an industry first Auto Top-Up feature for cash ring games. The Auto Top-Up is a way to set the amount of money that you want your stack size to be. If you lose some money, your chips will automatically be replenished back up to the amount you set as your default stack size.

You can access the Auto Top-Up settings from the Full Tilt Poker lobby by selecting “Options -> Set Buy-In Preferences…” from the main lobby. The picture below shows how to set the settings for this very cool feature.

I can honestly say that this is a feature that has been on my wish list for years. I am very anal about always having the maximum stack size at all of my tables. This can be quite a head-ache when playing 12+ tables of six-max no limit like I have been known to do on occasion. I sometimes have such a preoccupation with trying to frantically click from table to table so I can add 50 cents to my stack, that I lose track of other hands going on. I swear I don’t have OCD either…

Another very cool feature for all you note takers out there is the ability to check players notes from the main lobby without having to open the table they are at. If you are an avid note taker like I am, you like to check the notes you have on players at a table before sitting down. This saves time by viewing players’ notes without having to open the table up.

The last upgrade is the ability to sit out the next big blind. You can now check a box labeled “Sit Out Next BB” and you will automatically be sat out when you reach the big blind the next time. This is another monumental time saver for all you multi-tablers out there. It can be a hassle to un-check “Automatically Post Blinds” and then confirm that you want to sit out when the big blind gets to you for every table when you are playing a ton of them. This is a small upgrade, but one that is surprisingly useful to a small set of players.

Overall, well done Full Tilt. They have added a couple very useful features, but they did screw up their chance to get a step closer to PokerStars in the real money online tournament field. I am not sure why they felt the need to charge a 5% fee for T$ conversion. I guess they aren’t making enough money to pay their programmers that make all these software changes…

If you want to check out the changes, visit Full Tilt’s website or check out my Full Tilt Poker review for more info on the site.

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