I've been testing out the software for fulltiltpoker.com. If you've been living under a rock, it's a new site that has a bunch of the top tournament players affiliated with it, including Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Chris Fergusen, and many more. Right now they are beta testing for play money only.
The software has some interesting features. There are avatars you can choose from (the pros have custom avatars that look like them), and you can switch table backgrounds like at Ultimatebet. There is a "last hand" feature that brings up a window with a graphical representation of the hand (the board and all the known cards that were held), which is kind of cool.
I was playing NLHE last night when I noticed that Phil Ivey was at the 7 stud table which bears his name (the table names turn red when one of the pros are there). The wait list was 25 people and I was getting tired, so I just railbirded a bit.
If you want to see how much celebrity has entered the poker world, spending a couple of minutes railbirding someone like Phil will make it very clear. People were fawning all over him. Some of the questions he was asked were:
What kind of wheels do you drive?
What's the most you've lost in a single hand?
What kind of music do you listen to? (Answer: hip-hop, r&b, and jazz).
I wonder how many play money sessions these guys will have to put in before they wish no one knew who the hell they were :)
Ted