up to date reviews needed

Between everyone on here we must cover quite a few sites. Can people playing post some basic info about where they're playing.

Include opinion of software, does the site accept huds, how many tables are running at different stakes at whatever time of day, can you get rake back, bonus info and opinion on fishyness. Plus anything else useful.

Go go go!

I'll write something up for cake but I really don't know enough about software to make much of a judgement on it. What am I looking for if I'm comparing it to other sites I've played on? Is it just the ease of use or are there some other things I should be considering in a review?

Hmmm... I dunno. I'm not after essays, just basic info. I guess compare it to stars/ft as as far I'm aware they seem to be the best of the bunch. If you play there then maybe what bugs you about it? For me personally I'm looking for a busy site with lots of fishy games offering rake back with software that doesn't tilt me and workable with hem. But anything you come up with can't hurt. When I googled reviews for a few sites I either found old info or at best answers to only a few of the above mentioned questions.

From US? Go to Carbon. It's the closest to Stars. They don't have rakeback anymore but they have a VIP system like Stars and HEM works with the site. Cake's software tilts me to no end and I'm fairly certain the Merge (Carbon) network has more traffic than Sportsbook (Cake) does.

Not just us, everywhere. But at least we have our first review.

You def have better choices than cake. I've gotten used to the software so I don't have many problems with it. I have carbon downloaded too and really don't like their software. Filters are funny (can't seem to find a way to filter for a specific stake) and the insta all in button has the power to screw you bad if you're not paying attn.

Cake is def the fishier of the 2 with table vpips of > 50% @ 6max (4nl - 20nl) but the player pool is small so playing more than 4 tables is usually pointless. I keep thinking of withdrawing from cake and depositing on merge but whenever I troll carbons tables it just seems so reg infested that I don't feel it's worth it.

Cake does have some interesting rewards that I'm just beginning to understand with goldcards and goldchips that you earn while playing. Both can be used for donkament buy ins and the goldcard tourneys seem like they can be quite lucrative. You can also buy gold cards from an exchange to use for these tourneys so if you're savvy you can find cheap buy ins with decent payouts in relatively small player fields.

Another bonus for me is that I signed up for rakeback thru raketherake who gives out tickets to random freerolls which have prize pools of up to $5k. I think the last one I played had ~ 250 entrants.

With that being said, we've all heard about cakes payout issues. I'm reaching a point where I'm thinking about cashing out part of my roll so I'll update with whatever nightmare comes from that.

No HUD and payout issues is the major downfall of Cake. I'll backup the statement though of Cake being fishy, because it is - always has been because of them HUD restriction. If they dropped the restriction, the traffic would most likely double but most of the increase would be players with half a poker brain. So take the good with the bad I guess as far as traffic goes.

The all-in button on Carbon can be turned off in the options. That thing screwed with me on the play money tables before I even made a deposit. If they didn't have the option to turn it off there would be a lot of angry misclicking, button-mashing regs that would have their ass!

HUD restriction has been drooped. It's supposedly session only but apparently PT3 has bypassed that I'm on HEM so dunno. But I can see full stats on players in reports, just not on HUD.

Originally Posted by supa

HUD restriction has been drooped. It's supposedly session only but apparently PT3 has bypassed that I'm on HEM so dunno. But I can see full stats on players in reports, just not on HUD.

Wait, the HUD works on Cake now? I know we can track the hands but didn't know it allowed the actual table display HUD. It's only PT3 though? Yeah I'm on HEM too.

Yes. HUD works for HEM but like I said, session only on HEM.

latest version of hem 2 has now had the session limit removed as well.

Is there no patch out there for older versions?

Just upgraded to hem2 and the HUD works just fine on Cake

Isn't this the same as Stars new bullshit rake system?

Poker VIP - CarbonPoker

Earning VIP Points

Ring Games: Earn 10 VIP points for every $1 of rake contributed to the raked pot. Fractional points are also awarded; so if a player contributed $0.75 in rake, the player would receive 7.5 points.

For example: There are three players in a hand (blinds $1/$2), the SB, BB and the Dealer. Dealer calls $2, SB folds, BB Checks (total pot $5). If no further bets were made, then the total rake taken would be $0.25. Both the BB and Dealer contributed $0.10 each, and would receive 1 VIP points each. Whereas, the SB contributed $0.05 to rake and would receive 0.5 VIP Points.