Filt Tilt Poker has to go down as one of the great disappointments in the history of online poker.

Planet Poker was the world's first online poker room, and they totally missed the boat on signing up players and getting a running start on the competition. Now, no one has ever heard of them, even though they had first crack at the gigantic market that Online Poker became. Still, Full Tilt Poker may have a worse story to tell.

The company was put together "by the Pros", and had several Worlds Series of Poker Main Event Champions on board. You could "Learn from the Pros", and people would regularly open up the poker room program on their computer and watch the top players online scoop pots that were tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars!

And the room also had all of the bells and whistles, offering a wide variety of poker games. Everything from Texas Holdem to mixed games that mimiced the H.O.R.S.E. games at the WSOP.

There were free rolls, micro-stakes games, player rewards, a full tilt "store" and other perks. But, they failed miserably when it came to standing up for their players by having sound business practices in place. When the Department of Justice finally swung their hammer at the online poker rooms who were servicing players from the United States, Full Tilt found itself unable to refund the players money. Instead, the DOJ alleges that the company was set up like a giant Ponzi Scheme.

They took payments from players, and incremented the numbers on the player's accounts, but actually syphoned off most of the monies. So when it came time to go to the bank and withdraw the player's funds and send everyone checks, the wasn't enough money in the account to cover it.

How far were the numbers out of line? Here's a quote from the Wall Street Journal - "On March 31, 2011, Full Tilt owed approximately $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S.-based players, but the company had just $60 million in its bank account, the government said in its filing Tuesday."

The doors closed on the online poker room in 2011. There were talks that the company would be bought, and player's funds would be returned eventually. None of that matters. PokerStars was the subject of actions by the Department of Justice, and all of their players had their player accounts refunded. PokerStars is the recommended choice for playing poker online on a Mac.