Royal Poker Blog

A. Rush Poker Tournaments: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-tournaments

It's Rush Poker applied to tournaments! Mostly the same as Rush ring games, with a few concessions to tournament play. The main changes:

• Instead of just tracking number of hands since paying the big blind, the small blind is also tracked.
• The actual amount of time since you last posted a blind matters nearly as much as how many hands you've gone since posting. This is to discourage stalling (there is no hand-for-hand, so we've made stalling detrimental/harder in other ways), however it's not so bad that you're unduly punished just for being very active in hands.
• When the tournament gets down to under 30 players, the tables start getting shorter (down to 4 handed tables when 10 players are left in a 9 handed tournament). This keeps the "rush" of Rush poker going.
• The tournament reverts to a normal tournament for the final table. This is also the only time you can observe a Rush Tournament.

As many guessed, all three "TBA" FTOPS events are Rush Tournaments. We have a Turbo, a PLO Knockout, and a big Rebuy. More details can be found on the FTOPS schedule later today and they will appear in the game shortly.

B. Tournament Tickets: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/tournament-tickets

We've completely revamped the old "token" system and created a Tournament Ticket system. If you had an old $26 or $75 token, it's been converted to a $26 or $75 tournament ticket. You can check your tournament ticket balance in the Cashier (where the tokens used to be).

This change allows a number of things. The most immediately visible include buying tournament tickets in the FTP Store, Iron Man Store, and FTP Academy store. Various freerolls (such as the weekly $1K Freeroll and the WSOP "Race to the Main Event" Freerolls) will award tickets.

Also enabled by Tournament Tickets...

C. Steps Tournaments: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/steps-tournaments

Found under Sit & Go->Steps, start with $3.30 and work your way through 7 steps to get your WSOP Main Event package. Eventually there will be other Step 7 tournament with different end prizes.

We've incorporated the old $26 and $75 token system into the new step system (as Steps 3 and 4), and all Step tickets from Step 3 on can be used in any tournament matching that buyin ($26, $75, $216, $640, and $2100), so there are lots of "exit points" to be had if the final Step doesn't interest you.

There are many different flavors of each Step (including regular, turbo, super turbo, 4-man HU, 6-max, 18-man, 36-man double shootouts, and a few daily MTTs) so everyone should be able to find a Step that suits them.

D. Super Turbo SNG Changes: We've "standardized" the Super Turbo SNG offerings. Instead of the slightly weird and limited buyin levels, we're now spreading Super Turbo SNGs at every "normal" SNG level from $1 to $1,000. In addition, we've modified the Heads-Up Super Turbo structure. Instead of 3 minute levels starting at 15/30 they're now 2 minute levels starting at 10/20, and instead of 300 starting chips they now have 500. Structures for 6/8/9 handed Super Turbos are unchanged.