Amaya Gaming Group has announced that the merger of PokerStars and Full Tilt will happen on May 17, with the latter’s poker platform being retired permanently.

Almost a month ago, our sister site PokerTube was the first poker news site to reveal Amaya’s next big move: a merger between Full Tilt and PokerStars. FT confirmed the move days later sending an e-mail to all of their customers in which support explained the future plans. Basically they said, starting in April, the ‘Full Tilt brand will run on the PokerStars platform.’. Amaya Confirms Full Tilt and PokerStars Player Pools Merger Canadian online gambling giant Amaya Inc. Confirmed on Tuesday that its on-line poker brands PokerStars and Comprehensive Tilt will merge their player pools to create a solitary poker item. Reports in regards to a possible merger emerged in several poker-oriented discussion boards earlier this week. Since its launch, Full Tilt Poker’s traffic fell and ultimately merged player pools with PokerStars, where they share a very similar software. These days, there is not a very good reason to play on Full Tilt if you already have a PokerStars account. After momentarily regaining their spot as the #2 online poker room in the world, Full Tilt Poker started to slip badly. After languishing as the #12 online poker network in the world, Pokerstars finally made the decision to merge the liquidity of the two sites in order to stop the slide.So, why did Full Tilt Poker 2.0 fail? Out with the old, in with the new. Full Tilt’s reputation may have been tarnished for a while, but now under the control of PokerStars, FullTiltPoker.com is once again a reputable place to play online poker.

Amaya announced the plan in February. As of last year, the two sites had roughly 70 percent of the global online poker market, Amaya Gaming said during a quarterly earnings report. Though Full Tilt was still profitable from poker, its “market share has been in decline since its 2012 re-launch,” Amaya said earlier this year. Red cliff casino bayfield wi.

PokerStars acquired Full Tilt from the federal government in a 2012 settlement worth $731 million. Two years later, Amaya bought the combined company for $4.9 billion. The former CEO of Amaya is facing insider trading chargers stemming from that acquisition.

Thanks to the merger of the PokerStars and Full Tilt player pools, customers will now only have one account between the two sites, as well as for StarsDraft, BetStars and Duel. Full Tilt, which has other casino games in addition to poker, will still exist as a brand.

“In coming days, Full Tilt players will be emailed direct and personal information on how this will affect them specifically, which depends on a variety of factors including their jurisdiction and the status of their PokerStars account (if any),” Amaya said in a press release.

The merger will “make us more nimble as we can focus our technological innovation on one platform, rather than two, so we will be able to innovate more quickly and enter newly-regulating and existing markets swiftly,” Amaya said in February.

Amaya re-entered the U.S. market via New Jersey in March, and it has also been pushing for regulated online poker in California, and most recently, Michigan.

The Canadian gaming giant also recently hired a lobbyist on Capitol Hill to presumably fight against Sheldon Adelson’s efforts to ban online gaming nationwide.

Full Tilt, formerly Full Tilt Poker, was shut down by the federal government in 2011 after being accused of operating as a “global Ponzi scheme.” The remission process that is reuniting victims of Full Tilt Poker with their lost money is still ongoing. Since the remission process began in early 2014, roughly $112 million has been returned to victims of the site. According to the federal government, $159 million was stolen from Americans when the site was run by Howard Lederer, Ray Bitar, Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst.

19:25
10 Mar

Almost a month ago, our sister site PokerTube was the first poker news site to reveal Amaya’s next big move: a merger between Full Tilt and PokerStars. FT confirmed the move days later sending an e-mail to all of their customers in which support explained the future plans. Basically they said, starting in April, the ‘Full Tilt brand will run on the PokerStars platform.’ But what does that really mean? What will happen to all those Full Tilt accounts? And what about FT promotions, rewards, and its unique design and avatars? Will they just disappear? Well, not really. Most of it will still be available, only bigger and hopefully better in terms of liquidity, cash tables, tourneys, and oh yes, prize pools. Still not sure what to believe? Don’t worry, like always, we’ve got you covered and we’re pretty sure that if you read the next lines, all will be clearly explained.

A Single Cross-Platform User Account

First thing first: what will happen to your Full Tilt username? Well, after April 1, 2016, like the liquidity and traffic, the FT account will ‘merge’ with your PS account and based on those details, a new, universal, cross-platform account will be created. Universal? Yes, you will be able to access it across all Amaya platforms - Full Tilt, PokerStars, BetStars and StarsDuel.

If you have a linked PS username in your FT cashier, the details from your PS account will be taken into consideration at the time of the merger. And yes, that means your FT user will become obsolete. If you haven’t played on PS before, then the FT details will be center-stage so you will be able to play on Stars using your FT user. Don’t worry though, at least your FT fancy avatar will remain the same no matter the situation.

Ok, but what if I have cash on the FT account? Well, all assets - cash, coins, tournament dollars, tournament tickets, cash game ticket,s and even your edge rewards - will be transferred to your new account. So if you have on PS $100 and on FT $50, your new account will be credited with $150.

As for the other assets:

Real money ring game tickets will be converted to real dollars and transferred to your new account.
Tournament dollars will be transferred to your T-Money balance while your tournament tickets will be converted to T$.
FT Coins will be converted into StarsCoins at a rate of 7 StarsCoins per 1 Coin.
FT Points will be converted into StarCoins at a rate of 1 StarCoin per 2.5 FTPs.
Bonuses and pending Edge Rewards will also be converted into real dollars based on progress.

PokerStars VIP Club Across All Platforms

At the time of the upgrade, the Edge Rewards Program will become extinct and replaced by PokerStars’ own VIP Club. Don’t sweat though: this doesn’t mean your efforts so far have been in vain. The FT Rewards Program will also be converted into the equivalent VIP Club Status based on your 30-day rolling FTP average. If you earned 181,818 FTP or more in 2015, your new account will be automatically set to the Supernova Status.

Full Tilt Poker Pokerstars

What about PS VIP Club? What if you played on both PS and FT, would the reward programs also merge? In a way, yes. If you have a VIP Club Status on PS and plenty of activity on FT, your new account will have whichever status is higher after FT conversion. So if you’re Chrome on PS and after the FTP conversion, you’re Gold, that means you will start the new merger era with the Gold Status.

Shared Player Pool… Same Experience?

Now, the one million dollar question for those who love the Full Tilt design: will the FT platform be still available after the merger? Actually yes, but we do not know to what extent just yet. There are definitely some different opinions out there regarding what a poker skin actually means and how the FT software will change after the merger

Full Tilt Poker Merge With Pokerstars