Carbon Poker Review

Carbon Poker Summary

Carbon Poker is one of the newer poker rooms on the scene, getting its start in 2007. Despite the lack of any big names promoting he site, or an excess of promotion, the site has grown quickly on the strength of its freerolls, promotions, and tournaments, as well as some unique software
features.

Carbon Poker Bonus

Starting first with their deposit bonuses, Carbon offers one of the best initial deposit bonuses on the market, a 100% match bonus up to $600. In addition to this, new real money players get access to two weeks’ worth of daily freerolls for new depositors, with over $5,000 in cash up for grabs. The bonus is earned by collecting comp points, and is paid out in $10 increments.
One small wrinkle in earning your bonus money is that a withdrawal cannot be made in the meantime, or else the remaining amount of your bonus is forfeited. So if it takes you two months to earn your full bonus, you can’t withdraw any money from the site during this time, which seems like an unnecessary restriction.

Carbon Poker VIP Program

Comp points are also used with their VIP rewards program, which allows players to trade in their points for a selection of items, cash, or for entries into special comp point tournaments. A currently running promotion is their March Madness promotion, which rewards even more cash for comp points collected through March, making it a great time to sign up and play some heavy poker, earning your deposit bonus and promotional bonus at the same time.

Carbon Poker Deposit Options

Carbon has a nice selection of deposit and withdrawal options, including Neteller, MoneyBookers, Credit Cards, Click2Pay, and wire transfers. U.S players though are restricted to credit card and bank transfers for deposits and withdrawals. Before withdrawing money, Carbon Poker may decide they need further verification of your identity, which usually involves e-mailing or faxing them a copy of your driver’s licence, so you may want to go ahead and begin this process before your first withdrawal.

Carbon Poker Tournaments

Carbon has some tournament types that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else, such as bounty tournaments and ladies-only tournaments. Bounty tournaments reward players who are responsible for knocking other players out of the tournament with bonus cash. This style of play rewards the more aggressive players who take chances, as opposed to the usual tournament play style where players often hang back and out of sight, only making an appearance when they have a killer hand. Even knocking out just a few players will result in earning a nice deal of money, no matter where you end up finishing in the actual tournament.

Carbon Poker Freerolls

A nice feature that has helped Carbon Poker grow quickly is the numerous freeroll tournaments they offer. These tourneys are completely free for anyone to enter, and can be a great tool for playing competitive poker. Even though entry is free, with real money on the line the games are played much tighter than they would be during free money games. A common mistake of new players is to simply try and hone their skills through free money games, but these games are played so loosely that they offer almost no real value as a training tool. With tournaments like these, players can get a real poker experience without having to spend any money.

Carbon Poker Cash Games

Being as new as they are, Carbon is still on the lower end of the traffic scale, which can make it difficult to find good rooms to play in on many of the game types, and even difficult to get good rooms in Texas Hold’em at the higher limit amounts. No limit games are offered from $0.02/$0.04 to $50/$100. They have one of the best game selections of any site, with Hold’em, Omaha, H.O.R.S.E, Razz, Stud, Draw, Euchre, and more, plus a number of video poker style games.

Carbon Poker Software and Graphics

Being one of the newest sites out there, it’s not entirely surprising that Carbon Poker has one of the nicest software packages going. They’ve been able to study what works from other sites and incorporate those features into their own stylish design, while adding some unique elements all their own, like showing the percentages that each player has of winning during a showdown, for a very T.V like presentation. Another nice feature is the ability to show just one of your hole cards, rather than showing or mucking both of them. This can really be used to try and get into the heads of your opponents and keep them guessing.
The graphics have a very modern and clean look, with high clarity regardless of window size. One aspect that still needs work is the ability to download hand histories and other game data, which isn’t currently available.
Some areas of the presentation are still rough around the edges though, like their promotions page still listing a chance to win a trip to the 2008 Aussie Millions, which is over a year out of date. Despite this, the ambition they’ve shown in securing top flight tournaments entries, as well as their creativity and options, has made them a site to watch. It should be noted that the site does not currently accept players from Australia.