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It´s okay, we´ll help you build one!Carbon Poker Review
Have you ever wondered what a poker site would like if social media sites like Facebook or Twitter got in the game? Well, it would probably resemble something like Carbon Poker.
Just like Aced, CarbonPoker.com offers some cool new features that makes it a cool hip online poker room.
Software
The download for Carbon Poker is on par with most poker sites’ downloads. Carbon’s software is about 12.5MB (in fact, a little on the light side) and of course is Windows only. When will poker sites realize that the number of Apple users is growing? The minimum requirement for Carbon poker is 98 or better, a 400MHz Pentium processor, 128 MB of RAM and 30MB of disk space. Carbon requires that you have Adobe Flash installed.
Once installed, the program works pretty seamlessly, allowing you to tab between tables and other applications.
Aesthetics
I was pleasantly happy with the look of Carbon. It had a very cool, strong design when it comes to the tables. The layout follows the function over design philosophy, which is much appreciated. Everything is where it should be, raising buttons are aligned together, one row in multiples of the blinds and another in percentages of the pot, which helps those players who decide their bets and raises based on the size of the pot. A quirky feature that I enjoyed was when players type a message, not only does it appear in the chat box but also above the player in a dialogue box, which helps out tremendously when trying to distinguish who is talking trash and who is complimenting a nice play.
Everything else is pretty much standard to online poker. The site does offer cascading, helping those players who like playing on multiple tables simultaneously.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the lobby portion of Carbon, it seems the designers simply copy and pasted the same design seen too often on poker sites.
The search and filter features seem to be a very wink link on Carbon. In tournaments, the filter doesn’t allow you to search for a particular type of tournament such as turbo, bounty or freerolls, so players are forced to scroll through tournaments looking for a particular type of tourney.
Games
The game offerings at Carbon are going to meet most of the demand of online poker players. Games include Texas Hold ‘em, 7-Card Stud, Omaha Hi and Hi-Lo, HORSE, Razz, 5-Card Stud, 5-Card Draw, A-5 Lowball, 2-7 Lowball, Triple Draw and Badugi, which is gaining popularity in the states.
The site, like others, offers non-poker games, like Blackjack, Roulette and Caribbean Stud, which the site promotes pretty heavily. There is also video poker and Euchre.
The site boosts features such as being able to expose only one card when winning a hand and Deal It Twice, which allows two all-in players the option to deal the turn and river community cards two times, a popular feature among house-game players.
One great feature that really stood out at Carbon is its Rabbit Hunt feature. We have all been there, either at a house game or at a casino, where either the turn or river card left unturned. How much sleep have you lost wondering if that third diamond was coming? Well, Carbon offers players that option.
If a player wins a hand unopposed, he or she has the option of going rabbit hunting and see the turn and/or the river. The only catch is in order to see the cards, you must reveal your hole cards. A small price to pay for a good night’s sleep but it can also show your opponent whether they made the right call or if they should call you next time.
Stakes
For cash games, the stakes run pretty conservatively, starting at $.02/.04 and going up to $50/100.
Tournaments
The tourneys at Carbon are fairly typical. Carbon offers bounty, heads up, turbo and shoots outs - nothing more or less than other comparable sites. Though its offerings in freerolls are rather slim, it does offer a freeroll tournament once every four hours. It’s nice to know the schedule of freerolls as oppose to other sites, which seem to just randomly schedule these tourneys. Carbon also has special tournaments for new despot players.
Bonus
The Carbon Poker Bonus code is NPF600 and gives you a 100% bonus on your first deposit up to $600, and an entry into a $500 freeroll.
Find out more about the Carbon Poker Bonus Code on this page.
Cashier
Fortunately, U.S. can get in on the action at Carbon poker. The site offers a plenty of options, credit cards, eWalletXpress, Click2Play and wire transfers. Players who want to start with a small bankroll can deposit as little as $10 through eWalletXpress through Carbon Poker.
Overall
With everyone on Facebook and Twittering (look it up if you need to), it’s very cool to see a poker site not only embrace these new social media tools but take advantage of them. Case in point – the site uses Twitter to announce exclusive freerolls, known as Twitter freerolls. To follow Carbon Poker on Twitter, visit www.twitter.com/carbonpoker. Through Twitter, the site promotes upcoming specials and updates on the site, such as the amount of bad beats and $1 Caribbean Stud Jackpot.
Carbon also has a very active blog, which in addition to typical poker news and includes jokes, anecdotal stories and more. It’s refreshing to see a poker site try to be more engaging with its players. Carbon already has 2,1500 followers so it’s obviously working for Carbon Poker and I expect other pokers sites to follow suit and embrace Twitter and Facebook.
The site also has a page on Facebook, which people can become “fans” of. Search for wwwcarbonpoker on Facebook or go to www.facebook.com/pages/wwwcarbonpokercom/38608549400 to find the site’s page on Facebook. On the site’s page, players share brag about their bankrolls (imaginary or real) and of course bad beats (like we don’t hear enough of those at our home games). Carbon Poker only has about 60 fans on Facebook but it’s a start.
The site also has a YouTube page. I found this aspect to be greatly entertaining. If you go to http://www.youtube.com/user/CarbonPokerMedia, you can find clips of great hands, including a $1.2 million bad beat (the two players had both ends of a straight flush), which salivate any gamer’s quench to be at a table. I know it did for me. There are also videos of the site’s features and tips.
While these are great features, the true test of any poker site ultimately is its gameplay. At Carbon, it’s better than most of its peers and offers a strong enough experience to distract you from your Facebook and Twitter updates.
Carbon Poker Review