CARBON POKER FULL SITE REVIEW

SITE HISTORY

Carbon Poker is part of the Merge Gaming Network and accepts players from all countries including the United States. The poker room received a lot of acclaim as one of the newest poker rooms with plenty of rewards and a world record for the biggest online bad beat jackpot of $1.2 million awarded in February of 2009. Carbon Poker offers a clean design, great rewards and a 30% rakeback program on top of a juicy 100% first time deposit program up to $600.

GAMES OFFERED

Carbon Poker offers a diverse array of games to play at their poker room. The bread and butter game is Texas Hold'em for both limit and no limit varieties. Omaha, Stud, 7 Card Stud, Hi/Lo games, Razz, 5 Card Draw, Badugi and Triple Draw are all offered regularly in both cash game and tournament formats.

There's a nice amount of tournaments available on the site including regular satellites to some of the world's biggest live poker events, bounty tournaments, shoot outs, freerolls (ranging from $50 to $50,000) and guaranteed tournaments with impressive buy-ins and structures ranging from freeze outs to rebuys, add-ons and deep stack events.

TRAFFIC

As a new poker room you aren't going to see the massive traffic that some sites offer. However, most players at Carbon are not full time grinding sharks, or in more blunt terms, the players here are pretty terrible at poker. At the No Limit Texas Hold'em tables you'll find a good amount of action during peak hours only with 5-10 tables running at all levels through $1-$2 and the occasional $5-$10 game running during weekends.

VIP PROGRAMS & BONUSES

Carbon Poker offers a lucrative 30% rakeback deal through Absolute Incentives. There's even more to love about this poker room with a fantastic 100% first time deposit bonus up to $600, so building a bankroll on the site between rakeback and the deposit bonus is a lot easier done here than at other sites. There's always a bad beat jackpot (awarded to a player that loses with quad 7s or better) running which has even reached the aforementioned $1.2 million payout earlier in 2009.

The VIP program at Carbon Poker is one of the best in the industry. As players play more at real money games, they accumulated VIP points. Every time a player reaches a point threshold, they are rewarded with an automatic bonus cash payout. These range from $2.50 (500 points) all the way up to $750 (for 25,000 points) in a month. You can also exchange points for cash ranging from $100 (in exchange for 10,000 points) up to $500 (in exchange for 50,000 points). Players can also buy into special VIP tournaments with their points and enter into freerolls rewarded to various levels of the VIP program. On top of that, players can spend their VIP points at the VIP store which offers some of the best electronic, poker, home and sports gifts a poker player could ever hope for.

LOBBY & TABLE SOFTWARE

Carbon Poker is constantly updating their lobby and table software, which already ranks as one of (if not the) best in the business. The lobby has tabs that route players directly to the type of game they want, along with sub-tabs to find more specific games. There is also a filter tab that allows a player to filter down the table matrix to find the specific game and level they are looking for so they can jump right into the action.

Some interesting things about the software and specifically while at the table is that the tables were designed with vector graphics, meaning that players get a crisper and clearer game play screen and associated fonts and graphics no matter what size you make the table. There's also the ability to "deal it twice" which allows the opportunity to all-in players to have the option to deal the turn and river cards twice (as seen on popular shows like High Stakes Poker). You can also "rabbit hunt" meaning you can see what the river card would have been even though the hand is dead, as well as having the ability to multi-table between many different games.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

What Carbon Poker lacks in steady traffic it makes up for in a great VIP system, solid rakeback, a great first time deposit bonus offer as well as some of the worst players playing poker on the internet. The site does not support hand history saving, meaning that HUDs and tracking programs will not work at this poker site. This is a good thing for players that don't multi-table too much as people will not be able to keep reads on you as you play more on the site. Between all that this site has to offer, there's a lot to like about this new poker room in Carbon Poker.