10/20/09 - The latest software upgrade at Full Tilt Poker.com includes a new "Run It Twice" feature which should prove popular, enabling as it does an option where the players can pre-select a facility that allows them to see up to five community cards dealt a second time.
The feature is available on specific Run It Twice tables, although there are apparently plans to extend it further once the trialling period has been satisfactorily completed and usage assessed.
The term "run it twice" will be familiar to television railbirds from the cash games broadcast on TV such as High Stakes Poker. The basics are that when two players are all-in, they can both agree to lay down the remaining community cards again - hence the term 'run it twice'. For example, two players all-in 'running it twice' from the flop would deal the turn and the river and then a second set of turn and river cards. Two separate boards are formed, each one worth 50 percent of the pot. Fans of the concept say that it creates more excitement, and can prevent a cautious player from losing his or her entire stack on coinflip hands.
Full Tilt has also introduced a new format for tournaments that allows some of the prize pool to be cashed out by the players. In this format, half of the player's buy-in goes into the prize pool, and the other half goes into a specially designated cashout pool. At any point in the tournament before the final table, a player can choose to cash out between 10 and 100 percent of their stack for a guaranteed payout.
The Cashout option can be accessed at any point by clicking on a large red button in the upper left of the table window, which pops up a second window with information on the player's remaining chip count and what compensation will be paid.
A Full Tilt spokesman gave an example of how this might work, assuming that the player in a $20+$2 tournament started with 1 500 in chips. Those 1 500 chips are now worth $10 (half the buy-in), should the player choose to exit the tournament. But if the player managed to double up to a 3 000 stack he or she would be looking at breaking even, insuring against loss while still enjoying the tournament, albeit with far fewer chips.
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The cashout period ends once the tournament reaches the final table, when all the money remaining in the Cashout Pool is distributed between the remaining players in proportion their stack size.
The software upgrade also introduces 7-Game tournaments. Mixed games have become increasingly popular over recent years, as the top pros seek to demonstrate their abilities over a wide range of poker disciplines. In a 7-game mix, at every round the action switches between Fixed Limit Hold ‘em, Fixed Limit Stud H/L, Fixed Limit Razz, Fixed Limit Omaha H/L, Fixed Limit Stud Hi, No Limit Hold ‘em and Pot Limit Omaha Hi.
