I'm fairly new to online poker, and I'm looking for some help and advice on getting started with Full Tilt. I've been using Full Tilt, Party Poker and PokerStars to play for free for a while now, and overall I like Full Tilt the best and I've decided to make the move into playing for real money. I'm an American, however, so this isn't without a few complications.

First of all, looking at Full Tilt's site, it seems that aside from Visa/Mastercard and Cash Transfer, they only are compatible with one e-wallet (Click2Pay) and they don't accept US customers. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there another way to put money into Full Tilt or am I pretty much limited to just Credit Card or this Cash Transfer (which I can't do because the minimum deposit for Cash Transfer is $250 and I was looking to only put in about 50-100 tops).

Beyond depositing issues, I've been looking around the web and've been seeing a lot of talk about rakeback programs and stuff, and software that's supposedly helpful. Being that I'm new to online poker, of limited funds and not sure that I'll be sticking with the internet for my poker games I'd like to avoid spending too much (any) money for this, but I've noticed that there's some out there that offer their stuff for free with a deposit to Full Tilt (or other poker programs) of $50 or more.

I'm wondering if anybody has any advice on how I can maximize on this. I know that most of these sites require that you sign up for a new Full Tilt account to get their deals, so does that mean I can only sign up for one of these things to get the deal, or can I get several of them? Also, I'm really just curious about what software people think would be the most useful to new players out there, though I'm doing my research beyond this thread on that issue.

Thanks a lot for any help anyone can give me.

First off, you can only sign up through one site for a deal. That site gets a cut, from you signing up through them, and so they don't offer deals to multiple people for the same person. You need to sign up a brand new account in order to do this. If you had signed up without an affiliate, and had never made a real money deposit, or played for real money (ie never won money from a freeroll), then you should be able to make a new account, and sign up for rakeback for this account ( I did this as I had never played on the account or made a deposit, and had no problems). I would recommend rakeback, if you plan to stay at the site for a while, as it is a lifetime deal, rather than a temporary kickback deal (which gets you something like cash one time, rather than rakeback of money every month lifetime.)

What rakeback is, is everytime you they take money from a pot, you get a share of that back. So if the pot raked $1, and it is 5 players dealt, your portion is 20 cents, and at the end of the month, you get 27 % of your total portion. So you can see that playing a great number of hands, can mean quite a bit back at the end of the month. Even if you play at low limits, it is preferrable to have this continuous bonus lifetime, rather than cutting it off at the start for a one time bonus. When signing up at a rakeback site, you have to remove the full tilt software, and re-download it through their link, and use their code when signing up for your account.

As for a rakeback site recommendation, I use raketherake.com, a very well trusted site. (My # for referral is RTR16934, so if you sign up through them, a referral would be much appreciated, and won't affect what you get back). They have monthly freerolls on full tilt ($25,000 this month) for generating a certain amount of rake, as well as rake races (bonuses for those who rake the most from their signed up players). Service has always been quick and helpful, so no complaints about them.

I'm sorry to say, I'm not from the US, so can't make suggestions on deposits, but hope this helps explain some stuff for you. If you have any questions, pm me.