Carbon Poker is the flagship site of the Merge Gaming Network. In addition to poker, Carbon offers casino games and has recently added sports-betting to its offerings. It is regulated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

Carbon Poker’s software is fast and easy to use. The lobby sections are intuitive and make it easy to find the type of game you are looking for. If you want to search for a specific type of game, you can use the handy lobby filters to narrow the selection down a bit.

At the tables, you can tag players with an icon and color. All the standard options like 4-color deck, auto-rebuy, and preferred seating are available. Hand histories are fully compatible with popular tracking software like HEM2 and PT4.

One annoyance is that the note-taking interface is a large box that frequently obscures the action at the tables. The lack of a robust player-search feature may also cause disappointment. The tables and card designs are not quite as customizable as they are on some larger sites. Overall, Carbon’s software is functional and stable, although it is not in the same league as PokerStars’ or Full Tilt’s software.

Unsurprisingly, the most popular game is No Limit Hold’em. There are No Limit Hold’em cash games running almost all the time at $3/$6 and below. What may be surprising is that Carbon has a decent-sized community of Limit Hold’em players, with tables frequently running at $3/$6 and lower and higher action occasionally popping up. There are usually multiple games of PLO running, at $.50/$1.00 and below. Other games offered at Carbon include Limit Omaha/8, 2-7 Triple Draw Low, Badugi, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud/8, Razz, 5-Card Draw, and HORSE. Unfortunately, the action is sparse at these other games.

Carbon Poker’s big weekly tournament is the Sunday Big Ticket, a $200 + $15 tournament with a $100k guaranteed prize pool. This tournament runs every Sunday at 4:00 PM server time, and features some pretty soft competition, as many players win their entry in satellites or freerolls. For those on smaller bankrolls, Carbon offers a wide range of tournaments throughout the week, many with buyins of $5.50 or less. Freezeout, R&A, deepstack, and bounty tournaments are all well-represented in the weekly schedule.

Carbon started running their "Poker Maximus" MTT series in 2025, and it proved to be an oft-repeated success. Typically, these tournaments feature larger prize pools than usual, a wide range of games and buyins, and special satellites to encourage participation. Winners receive accolades, which appear next to their names at the tables, and often win other perks as well.

After Black Friday, many competent US grinders migrated to the Merge Network, looking for a new online home, making the NL Hold’em cash games difficult to beat. These cash games remain somewhat tough, but the other cash games like PLO and Limit Hold’em are quite beatable. Tournaments, for some reason, did not attract the same quality of players that the cash games did and remain very soft.

Carbon offers a whopping 200% first deposit bonus, up to $5,000. This bonus, while large, clears at an irritatingly slow rate. Nevertheless, it releases in small parts, so players gain some benefit even if they cannot earn the whole amount. Carbon’s VIP system offers monthly rewards to frequent grinders – the more you play, the more you get back. Other promotions include double VIP points hours, a Sit-N-Go leaderboard, and a bevy of freeroll entries given to qualified players.

Players from most countries and US states can play at Carbon Poker. However, players from France, Australia, and Singapore are not allowed to play. Players from Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Utah, Washington, and Washington, DC are also unable to sign up for new accounts.