PokerStars and Full Tilt Players to Merge on May 17th

Since Amaya announced earlier this year that PokerStars and Full Tilt would soon start sharing their player pools, all the necessary preparations have now been made and the merger is all set to be implemented on May 17th. The writing was already on the wall for Full Tilt at the end of 2015, however, after Amaya mentioned in its Q3 report a need to stabilize the brand by providing access to PokerStars’ liquidity and technology.
Full Tilt was once the world’s second most popular poker site, and was home to the highest stakes cash games to be found anywhere online. It never recovered from Black-Friday and its player funds scandal, though, and since relaunching in 2012 Full Tilt has dropped down PokerScout’s online poker traffic rankings and is currently just 14th on the list with an average of 550 cash players over a 7-day period.
At one stage there was even talk of selling Full Tilt’s poker platform, but in the end Amaya decided effectively to retire its software and turn the site into a skin of its main PokerStars brand. All Full Tilt customer account details, including screen names, balances, and loyalty points, will now be switched following the May 17th update, and both PokerStars and Full Tilt players will subsequently share a single account. As the PokerStars original announcement explained:
“Full Tilt players will continue to enjoy the brand experience they love, with the continuation of Full Tilt avatars and innovative rewards, such as The Deal.”
While the move is likely to have only a minimal effect on the size of PokerStars’ player pool, Full Tilt players, on the other hand, stand to benefit from having a greater choice of poker games, together with bigger guaranteed prizes. In addition, Amaya is likely to enjoy some slight cost savings improvement from the merger, although any impact to its revenues is likely to still be minimal.