Full Tilt Poker Academy

Full Tilt Poker recently gave a pleasant surprise to the poker world by opening a completely free poker training school called the Full Tilt Poker Academy. As a member of the Academy, you’ll get access to poker training lessons, videos, podcasts, quizzes and more – all led by some of the biggest name pros in the world.

Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Allen Cunningham and many other big names contribute regularly to the Academy’s knowledge base. Whether you want to learn about cash games, multi-table tournaments or SNGs, you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.

How Do I Join?

To get a Bronze membership, all you have to do is sign up for a Full Tilt Poker player’s account. You don’t even have to make a deposit. Just sign up at Full Tilt and then you can log in to your Academy account any time using the same login.

Upgrading to the Silver or Gold membership is easy as well. All you have to do is earn 10 Full Tilt Points to get a Silver membership and 500 Full Tilt Points to get a Gold membership.

Once you earn enough points to upgrade your membership, you’re in for life. These points are also retroactive so if you already have a Full Tilt account, any points you’ve earned so far count towards your membership level.

What Do I Get?

Members of the Full Tilt Poker Academy get access to some of the internet’s best poker training tools including:

• Lessons from over 100 Full Tilt pros

• Video lessons that include both strategy talk and videos of the pros actually playing at tables and explaining their moves

• Special challenges, much like the achievements system on the Xbox 360. As you complete these challenges, you’ll earn Academy Credits, which can be exchanged for cash, tournament tokens, poker gear and more

• Podcasts from the pros

• Sit-N-Learns – interactive video quizzes that will help you improve your knowledge of the game

• If you score well in the Sit-N-Learns, you’ll be given entry to special freerolls every month

• Access to the “My Account” feature which keeps details statistics of your game play, player ratings and challenge progress

Texas Holdem is the main game at the Full Tilt Academy but you’ll also find lessons for every other poker type. You can watch Chris Ferguson play a real $25,000 heads up match or sit in on Andy Bloch while he plays high stake H.O.R.S.E. games.

Overall Quality

So far I’ve been impressed with the level of quality offered by the Full Tilt Academy. Some of the text based lessons are on the basic side, but that’s fine because the Academy was designed for all players of all skill levels.

Once you dig in to the videos and some of the advanced lessons, you’ll find all sorts of in-depth strategy material. The most useful content is probably the videos where you get to watch the pros play and explain every action they take at the tables.