Carbon Poker.com Overview
is the former Poker.com rebranded with a new face lift. It is speculated that it was troublesome for them to advertise real money games under the old domain name. However, no one knows for sure.
Carbon Poker is part of the Merge Gaming Network and US players will be glad to know that they are welcome at this online poker room. As far as security goes, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission regulates Carbon, so you can be assured of the fairness and integrity of the games.
CarbonPoker.com supports a variety of payment processors in order to accommodate all players. They take credit cards, Click2Pay, NETELLER, ePassporte, Moneybookers, Ecocard and a few others.
As with other rooms, Carbon hosts the popular Texas Hold’em, Omaha and Stud variants. However, they also have rarer games such as H.O.R.S.E, Razz, 5 Card Draw, Ace to 5 Lowball, Deuce to 7 Lowball, and Badugi (Triple Draw). In addition to cash games, they have many tournaments and freerolls, mostly of the Texas Hold’em variety.
Players earn VIP Points for playing at Carbon. These points can be redeemed for freeroll tournaments, bonuses, reloads, or merchandise at their store.
You’ll probably be surprised to find that Carbon also has a very active poker forum with almost 200,000 posts in 12,000 threads. The forum is located at forum.carbonpoker.com.
Carbon Poker.com Software Interface/Usability
The software at is very good and contains some rare features not often found in other sites. They have a Rabbit Hunt feature, which will let you see what the river would have been if you didn’t fold. Other features include: Deal It Twice, which allows two consenting all-in players the option to deal the turn and river cards twice; a Bad Beat Jackpot for specially labeled Hold'em ring games; Player Tags with icon labels; and Quick Start, which allows four customizable presets for Game Type, Table Type, Stakes, and Minimum Players at Table. This feature will send you to the right table without having to search for it.
Perhaps the coolest feature of the site is one card exposure. Have you ever wanted to show someone that you had a pair of aces, but you didn’t want to because your kicker was crap? Well, on Carbon you can show just the ace.
The resizing of the tables is gorgeous, for lack of a better description. They use vector graphics, which means everything is always smooth and you can zoom without pixelation to any size you want.
The buddy list is the one of the better ones in the industry (actually, they don’t have much competition). You can categorize players with the typical notes, but you can also go one step further and give them an icon. There are the infamous fish and shark icons and even an “on tilt” icon. Another cool feature is that it can notify you when people on your buddy list log on. Unfortunately, you can hide yourself from this feature, effectively making it worthless.
With regard to actual software usability, it is easily the best we’ve seen. “Wait for BB” is available as an option, which will make a lot of people happy. The instant hand replayer is also very good, organizing all the games by player and table. There are previous and next buttons to quickly go back and forth through your hand histories. Plus hand histories are stored by default on your hard drive for 7 days.
Animations are nice and smooth, and when you are all-in with others, it will display your percentage of winning the hand, which adds a very nice touch.
The only minor annoyance found with the software is that you cannot type in “3 point 5 0 enter.” The enter key does not register; you must click the button. This is particularly troublesome for people who like to add random cents to their bets. You need to switch from the keyboard to the mouse more than on other sites.
As good as their client is, they just recently (April 2009) upgraded a lot of the software when they added the VIP Program. You can now choose a mini version, which has minimal "stuff" on the table for easy viewing. You can also customize tables with a plethora of options. You can choose the felt color, background (carpet), rail, interface, and front and back of the cards. And it's not like there's just 3 or 4 options. There are 40 colors for the table alone and dozens of card designs.
All in all, this is probably the most comprehensive software we have seen. It’s got everything! But everything comes at a cost. It eats CPU like no other, which means if you do not have a fast computer don’t even think about having more than 2 tables open. Running the software in performance mode helps, but CPU usage is still very high. Needless to say, it’s ironic that they do not have a maximum table rule, because most computers won’t have the processing power to handle that many tables anyway. The good news is that every software update gets better and better and the CPU usage is always decreasing.
CarbonPoker Poker Room Action
Unfortunately, this network is very small so you will not find many games outside of Texas Hold’em. In fact, even the limit games are scarce. You will have a tough time finding any games above $1/2 blinds. is estimated to have anywhere from 300 to 500 cash players playing for real money.
Since the network is small, you will typically face a smaller number of players, which is good/bad depending on how you look at it. The guaranteed tournaments are very good because usually not enough players enter, so there is an overlay of extra cash to be won. Buy-ins start with freerolls and then range from 6 cent tournaments up to $100+9 tournaments. The Sit and Go population is minimal and it is tough to find a game above $20+2.
Carbon has recently updated their guaranteed tournament structure. With the addition of their VIP Program they have upgraded their weekly $20k guarantee to a very nice $50,000 guarantee tournament. Every Sunday they run this tournament for $100 + $9, or 10,000 + 900 VIP Points. The overlay is usually very generous. It's going to be hard to find a better value for tournament players.
One of the better things is probably their Comp Point buy-ins for freeroll tournaments. Every last Sunday of the month there is a $50k freeroll, for which you only need 5000 Comp Points to enroll in. Every Sunday has a $10k freeroll for 2500 Comp Points.
Carbon Poker's Ease of Game, Ease of Making Money, Fish Rating
As with most small networks, the average player is very bad. The tables are also much looser than comparable limits at large networks. You don’t have much choice in table selection, but it appears that you don’t have to look very hard for bad players.
CarbonPoker.com Bonus and Promotions
By using the bonus code FTR200, you will get a 200% deposit bonus up to $600 on your first deposit. That’s right! You get up to $600 free! This bonus is exclusive only to FTR members, so make sure you use the links on this page to sign up and Carbon Poker bonus code FTR200 when making your first deposit! This bonus is earned through the accumulation of comp points. (See the comp point details below.)
In addition, you will receive one entry into any $1000 freeroll. You also receive entry into $500 freerolls for new depositing players for 14 days.
eWallet Xpress Deposit Bonus:
An extra 15% bonus up to $150 for your initial eWallet Xpress deposit, even if you are an existing player.
PINdebit Deposit Bonus:
An extra 10% bonus up to $100 for your initial PINdebit deposit, even if you are an existing player.
NETELLER Deposit Bonus:
An extra 10% bonus up to $50 for every NETELLER deposit.
The bonus is cleared by earning VIP Points. The rate of return is 50 VIP Points for every $1 in bonus money. Every time you earn $10 in bonus money it is transferred into your real money account. So you need to earn 500 VIP Points for every $10 of bonus.
You earn VIP Points simply by playing at real cash poker games or in a real money tournament. You are awarded points in a ring game every time a flop is seen as long as you are involved in the hand (you must contribute to the pot). You are awarded 10 points for every $1 paid in rake or in tournament fees.
Remember also that Carbon's bonus has no expiration date, but automatically expires as soon as you make a withdrawal. So earn as much of the bonus as you can before you need to withdraw from your account, because the remainder will be forfeited.
Click here to join !
Carbon Poker.com Customer and Technical Support
Live Chat at is available to 'real' money players.
Their email support was very professional. They responded to our questions very quickly (in under an hour). Their representative was very articulate and provided accurate and concise information for the questions we wanted answered.
E-mail: support@carbonpoker.com
Lots of fish by v diddy on 24 Nov 2008
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