Carbon Poker Review

Carbon Poker broke into the mainstream poker world fairly recently but it has already proven itself to be here for the long term, and shows no signs of relenting even after “Black Friday” killed off some of the top poker sites in the United States for the time being.

In 2007, Carbon Poker entered the scene and started up a new network of poker sites called the Merge Network. Since that day, several dozen poker sites have joined the Merge Network and together they have developed a solid player base, mainly one built on their VIP program, which offers cash back rebates to new and veteran players just by moving up their tiered system.

This is one of the smaller sites in the industry but it’s growing quickly and new players are joining every day.  In fact, it recently crept into the 10 poker sites around the world after being stuck in the #11 to #15 range for a little over a year now.  According to PokerScout.com, the site now boasts well over 2,000 to 3,000 real money players online at peak hours, a HUGE jump from when they initially hit the market.

As a newer poker site, Carbon Poker may not have the huge volume of sites like PokerStars or Titan, but in time they should have developed an even more solid base than what they have now.  This online poker room is still known for the amount of fish to be swallowed up the smaller to medium-stakes games, and the Omaha action on this site is some of the craziest I’ve ever seen as a player.

Carbon Poker Deposit Bonus

Carbon is offering up to $600 in extra bonus money for all players who sign up and make a deposit with the bonus code G666. It’s a 100% match bonus so if you deposit $600, Carbon Poker will throw in an additional $600 on top of that – giving you a total of $1,200 to play with or withdraw.

New players automatically qualify for 14 days of $500 freerolls on the site as well, including cool promotions like the Super Money Tree, which adds bonus money on top of what you earn on your first deposit just for playing additional cash games, tournaments and SnG’s!  Additionally, they have other promos like the SnG and MTT Leaderboard, where players can earn hundreds of extra dollars monthly by being on top of the leaderboards in these respective tournament types.

The devil in the details: Your bonus money is released in $5 increments – or every 75 VIP points earned, $1 in bonus cash is earned. It sounds like a lot of work but VIP Points are actually pretty easy to earn. All you have to do is play in real money poker games like you normally would, sit and go’s, and tournaments as well. The minimum bonus amount is $10 and the maximum amount is $600.

Carbon Tournaments

The tournament selection at Carbon Poker consists mostly of Texas Holdem and Omaha matches but you’ll find the occasional Badugi and Omaha Hi-Lo tournament running as well.  Carbon Poker has slowly become one of the most popular places to play poker tournaments in light of “Black Friday,” where many USA sites like PokerStars and Full Tilt pulled out of the market due to DOJ pressure.

Tournament types include regular freezeout tournaments, turbos, Sit and Go tournaments, heads-up matches, satellites, rebuys, bounties and shootouts. Entry fees range from $0 and go up to about $109 and higher, which normally provide a weekly guarantee of $50,000 in the prizepool – which sometimes also doubles depending on the time of the year.

For a poker room of its size, the tournament offering isn’t too bad. You can’t find the huge million dollar guarantees here but if you want to have a decent shot at making the money against a bunch of weak players, Carbon Poker is a good place to start out.  It’s also showing zero sign of slowing up and more and more people have been registering, especially those in the United States looking for a new poker site.

Cash Games

One of the best things about Carbon Poker is it’s seemingly endless supply of easy money at the no limit cash games. The limit tables are pretty empty most of the time but if you like to play small to medium stakes no limit games, you’ll be good to go at Carbon.

The lowest stakes start out at $0.02/$0.04 and go all the way up to $50/$100 so you’ll have a wide selection of stakes to play at. The high stakes games are usually deserted but the small and medium stake games are full of inexperienced, casual poker players.

Carbon Poker Software

Carbon Poker has an effective poker lobby that makes it easy to find the games you want with the ability to sort the games by stake, buy-in and type. The table graphics are simple and do a good job conveying the action, not to mention you can play up to 16+ tables at once and can load up PokerTracker 3 or Holdem Manager to track your play against your opponents.

One of the coolest features in the Carbon Poker software is the ability to deal it twice. If two players get all-in and agree to deal it twice, the turn and river cards will be dealt twice – just like you would see in High Stakes Poker on GSN or another similar TV show.

Depositing and Withdrawing

Carbon Poker is open to players from the US and players from around the world (except Australia) and accepts a nice variety of deposit methods. The full list at Carbon Poker includes:

• Western Union (Cash Transfer on the Deposit screen)
• Visa
• MasterCard
• eWalletXpress
• NETeller
• Click2Pay
• ECO
• Fonelinx
• Moneybookers
• Pindebit

Cashing out is just as easy. Most of these methods can be used to receive your money but if you used a credit card, you’ll have to receive a check or use one of the other methods to have your money sent to you.

Customer Support

You can contact the Carbon Poker support team 24 hours a day via e-mail or live chat at the website. Questions are answered promptly and professionally so if you have any questions or problems, feel free to send them an e-mail or visit CarbonPoker.com for live chat.