Earlier this month, Full Tilt Poker started its transition to becoming a more ‘recreational’ online poker site. The operator wanted to offer a more inclusive service that would cater to non-professional players. It has been an interesting journey thus far.

Why Recreational?

The online poker machine continues to grow rapidly. While more and more players are getting involved in online poker, there are also many more new sites opening up. There are plenty of places for players to engage in poker games online, many of which are already known as hubs for professional players.

Sites like Party Poker and Poker Stars have a large roster of poker pros, and Full Tilt simply could not keep up. So, rather than aiming to attract more professionals, Full Tilt wants to attract more casual players.

UniBet has recently made a similar change. Over the course of the past few months, the site has implemented a number of changes to attract more recreational poker players. Thus far, the results have been quite successful, as UniBet has seen a 12% jump in revenue.

Making The Change

Full Tilt Poker made a number of changes to shift to a more recreational focus. These included:

  • Lowering the maximum stakes for cash games
  • Removing the table selection option (to prevent ‘bum hunting’)
  • Removing Heads Up poker games

This follows Full Tilt’s inclusion of casino games like slots, roulette and blackjack. By offering up a wide range of games, the site has set out to attract players who are interested in playing more than poker.

All of these changes were meant to make recreational players feel more comfortable playing online poker at Full Tilt. The goal was to ensure that casual players do not feel intimidated and, in theory, the strategy seemed successful.

The Results

Unfortunately, the shift to recreational gaming as not fared well for Full Tilt. In the week since introducing the new rules, the online poker site has seen a 20% drop in traffic. According to Poker Scout, Full Tilt’s seven-day average of players was 1000 during the week before the new rules were implemented.

The week following the changes, the seven-day average was just 800. Full Tilt has yet to offer an explanation for this shift. However, we believe that recreational players are not particularly keen on the new rules.

Although professional poker players are more likely to play heads up, recreational players enjoy this type of game as well.

Now that heads up games are no longer available, it is possible that many recreational players left the site to play poker with an operator that does offer heads up variations.