While coverage of Black Friday has generally treated Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars as if they were in the same boat, the fact seems to be that it was Full Tilt –  and not PokerStars –  who stood (and stands) to lose the most from the news of DoJ indictments.

Yes, there are parallels between the two rooms.  Both did gain a large part of their liquidity via their decision to stay in the US post-UIGEA.  Both maintain (or at least maintained) a large media presence in the US via a variety of channels.  The headlines for each were equally gloomy last weekend: “Poker Stars Shut Down”; “Full Tilt Closes Doors”.   But the parallels largely end there.  While Full Tilt continued to focus primarily on their battle with Stars in the US, Stars got busy on the international scene, developing nearly a dozen PS-branded live poker tours covering regions across the globe.

Stars was also very aggressive –  more so than Tilt –  in developing a high profile roster of local stars and celebrities attached to the various regional branches of their far-flung Team PokerStars.  Initiatives such as these, along with online projects such as the World Cup and various lobby innovations as multiple currencies, have given Stars a foothold in international markets that Full Tilt simply lacks.

Don’t get me wrong, Tilt is still a massive poker room, and their player base even without the US still dwarves the player bases of several prominent networks.  That said, it’s difficult to know if Tilt can continue to grow, or even maintain, that player base in the face of heightened uncertainty involving the future of the company.

PokerStars will face similar challenges, without a doubt, but the company simply seems more diversified that Full Tilt, a diversification that is the result of years of effort and untold millions of dollars of investment.  It will be a tough, perhaps impossible, challenge for Full Tilt to replicate that impact in the short term, especially with serious questions about the viability of the company continuing to fester in the industry.

Is survival a possible outcome for Full Tilt?  Absolutely, but it’s very telling that survival is now one of the most favorable outcomes for a company primarily preoccupied with challenging for the dominant spot in the industry only weeks ago.  It seems like the future, albeit an uncertain one, may still be brighter for the new www.Pokerstars.eu than for it’s FullTiltPoker.co.uk counterpart.