With recent renovations, Full Tilt Poker has a brand new engine under the hood that has taken care of a lot of lag issues for players with older computers or slower internet connections. On top of that upgrade was a brand new lobby interface that came with an entirely customizable set of filters for cash games and tournaments. In addition, the widget sidebar has a lot of neat features to make the lobby experience a positive one. Party Poker has a good lobby without the graphically pleasing interface and the software at the table is solid but uninspired. It's not to say that Party Poker isn't any good, it's just that this comparison isn't close.

When it comes to big time tournament action and a huge tournament series, Full Tilt Poker wins hands down. With their FTOPS and MiniFTOPs series, Full Tilt does a great job getting huge fields together for massive guarantees, sometimes in excess of $2.5 million per tournament. Regular tournaments throughout the day are plentiful on both sites, so as far as small and micro stakes players are concerned, there's really no difference between the two sites. However, big action players looking for big Sunday tournaments (Party Poker has one a month) and daily guarantees should stick to Full Tilt Poker.

Full Tilt Poker has all varieties of Texas Hold'em games, as well as Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, Razz, HORSE, HOSE and HO. Party Poker has just as good a variety of games with Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo and 7 Card Stud. There's really no huge difference between the two sites as both have plenty of Omaha action which seems to be the alternative game of choice to Hold'em.

Party Poker offers the ability to deposit via credit card, Neteller, Firepay and wire transfers such as Western Union. Withdrawals from Party Poker are handled much the same way with most people using Neteller. On the other hand, Full Tilt Poker offers deposit methods through wire transfer (Western Union), Instant eChecks, Cash Transfer and Click2Pay account transfers. You can withdrawal from Full Tilt through a premium bank wire, bank transfer or a paper check all of which are guaranteed within 15 days.

The good news is that you really can't go wrong here with either site. The general consensus is that PokerStars has a better player pool but because it's so big has more fish. Full Tilt Poker might have less players but a greater proportion of their players are bad. It's give and take but if customer service and a large player pool are important to you go with PokerStars. If finding the worst of the two sites' competition is important and you like swanky lobby software, go with Full Tilt Poker. Keep in mind, there's no reason not to join both!