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Posted by PokerPop on 21st May 2012

Carbon Poker has already been making some big-time upgrades to their software. Last month, they introduced the Carbon Poker Odds Calculator, which gives players a number of useful tools that can improve their play and profits. Interestingly enough, they’re not stopping here because Carbon will introduce some more big improvements through the 6.0 upgrade to their software. Here’s a quick look at the main points of Carbon Poker software 6.0.

Improved Lobby Filters

The new software upgrade will feature lobby filters that enable you to quickly find real money poker tournaments and cash games. Every tab you select brings up a new set of tabs to further define the exact game you’re looking for. For instance, you could choose “Tournaments,” “Regular,” “Omaha,” and “Pot-Limit Omaha.” Useful filter tools for cash games include “Hands Per Hour,” “Average Pot Size” and “Players Per Flop.”

Easily-Accessible Game Lists

Once you’ve found the desired stakes/poker game you’re looking for, you’ll see a list of available tournaments/tables. From here, you can simply click on a game and an expanded list will appear with important details. So if you clicked on a cash game, you’d see the players who are sitting at the table along with a waiting list. Clicking on a tournament will enable you to quickly see how many players are registered and the registration time.

Search Field

If you already have a good idea about what exactly you’re looking for, you can type the desired phrase into the search field. Some of the options you can search for in this field include player screen names, player tags, tournament ID’s, tournament names, and cash game table names. As you can see, there are plenty of interesting changes that are coming with Carbon Poker 6.0. So look for this new software product in June!

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Posted by PokerPop on 19th May 2012

Several weeks ago, we talked about how writers of the 1998 hit movie “Rounders” have written the script for a future movie called “Runner, Runner.” Besides hope that this film could be as good as Rounders, the initial excitement surrounding Runner, Runner is that Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake will be taking center stage. Moving past what we already know, there’s new word on the plot of Runner, Runner from Variety Magazine, which you can read about below.

Seeking Justice

The initial part of the plot centers on Timberlake’s character being cheated out of his college tuition money while playing online poker. Following his losses, Timberlake travels to Costa Rica – where the poker site is located – in hopes of getting his money back. Affleck comes into the equation because he owns the poker site where Timberlake’s money was lost. In an interesting twist, it sounds like the star singer/actor will help Affleck run the online poker room after going to Costa Rica.

UB Poker Revisited

After hearing the central plot in this movie, it’s hard not to think about how Runner, Runner is eerily similar to the UB Poker scandal. Often dubbed the “superuse scandal,” multiple high-profile poker players saw their bankrolls decimated after people within the UB office were found to be using superuser accounts, where they could see opponents’ hole cards.

1994 WSOP champion Russ Hamilton was one of the alleged superusers, and he’s been disgraced within the poker community ever since. Another key figure in the scandal was A.J. Green (alias), who was also said to be cheating high stakes players out of millions. Taking all of this into account, it will be interesting to see how closely Runner, Runner resembles the UB Poker scandal.

Assuming you’re looking to sign up at a superuser-free site, make sure to check out Carbon Poker. By signing up here, you’ll be in line for a 100% Carbon Poker bonus up to $600.

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Posted by PokerPop on 18th May 2012

Phil Galfond is arguably the best Pot-Limit Omaha player in the world. His expert play has enabled Galfond to win millions of dollars over the years and buy a sweet condo with a slide. But long before this, the PLO expert was a struggling online poker player at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Rough Start

Through a recent post at his site, Phil Galfond really did a good job of humanizing himself to the average player. He described his initial foray into the poker world by writing, “I started playing online poker for fun when I was a freshman in at University of Wisconsin – Madison. I deposited $50 and began with $10 Sit-n-Go’s. Clearly, I didn’t know much about bankroll management at the time. I lost my first $50.”

Student of the Game

After a very rough introduction to the online poker world, Galfond was able to redeem himself over the next year. He did so by joining poker forums, reading as much as strategy as he could, and taking advantage of every poker bonus available. His perseverance resulted in a $30-an-hour gig playing SNG’s. From here, Galfond’s life began revolving around improv classes and grinding on the cyber tables.

A Full-time Job

At one point of the blog, Galfond began discussed how he became so good at online poker that he was making $500-an-hour. And while most people will agree that a good education is important, it’s kind of hard to continue pursuing a diploma when you’re making more than most doctors and lawyers. So Galfond decided to drop out of UW – Madison and pursue poker full-time.

As we now know, Galfond has gone on to become one of the best poker players in the world. However, the grinder does wrap up the post by saying that he wishes he hadn’t been forced to grow up quickly because of poker success. You can read his full blog post here.

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Posted by PokerPop on 16th May 2012

Last month around this same time, we discussed how the writers of Rounders have produced a script for a new gambling film called “Runner, Runner.” The movie will star Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck, and it’s going to deal with the online gaming world.

While we wait for this film to be released, there’s a new poker movie out that’s appropriately titled “Poker Face.” Now I’ll warn you that – unless you speak Greek – you’re going to be reading subtitles the entire time. Assuming this isn’t a big deal, Poker Face looks like it’s worth watching at least once.

A couple of Greeks named Alkis Kourkoulos (Adiavrohos in film) and Evi Saoulidou (Niki) are the stars of this movie, and the plot centers on Niki’s desire to take down the incumbent champion Adiavrohos. As their rivalry develops, viewers are given a few cliche poker tips by Niki when she says the following:

Rule No. 1 – Wait for the right moment to make your move.
Rule No. 2 – Learn to smell the bluff from kilometers away.
Rule No. 3 – When you go busto, get in and play again.
Rule No. 4 – Don’t play the cards, play the opponent.

Long story short, don’t look to go from a win rate of 1bb an hour to 10bb an hour just by watching this movie. However, Poker Face does look like a pretty well-produced film, and it definitely should provide some nice entertainment value – at least judging from the Poker Face trailer we’ve put below:

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Posted by PokerPop on 14th May 2012

One bizzarre story that’s floating around the poker world right now involves eight Buddhist monks who were recently filmed playing high stakes poker in their hotel room. And when we say high stakes poker, we’re not talking about some yuppies bringing a collective few thousand dollars to their local Moose Lodge game. Instead, these monks allegedly bet $875,000 total while they were drinking and carrying on.

Apparently, this matter goes much deeper than just a bunch of pious monks committing what many would consider vices – at least according to Buddhist monk standards. The poker players were from a major South Korean Buddhist sect called the “Jogye,” where there’s currently a power struggle going on within the 10 million-member group.

Seong-ho, who was booted out of Jogye as a casualty of the power struggle, made sure to take a stab at the current leadership of the sect by saying, “Basically, Buddhist rules say don’t steal. Look at what they did, they abused money from Buddhists for gambling.”

Seong-ho has spent much of the past two years trying to wrestle leadership away from the current leader, Ven. Jaseung. Jaseung vowed that there would be repercussions for the high stakes poker monks’ actions as he said, “We deeply apologize for the behavior of several monks in our order. The monks who have caused public concern are currently being investigated and will be punished according to Buddhist regulations as soon as the truth is verified by the prosecution.”

So far, six of the eight monks involved were forced to resign following the story breaking. If only they would have stuck to online poker! Assuming you’re not a Buddhist monk and you’d like to play some online poker, why not sign up right here at Carbon. By creating an account and making a deposit, you’ll be eligible for a 100% Carbon Poker bonus worth up to $600.

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Posted by PokerPop on 13th May 2012

No matter how deeply committed you may be to playing poker tournaments, at some point, everybody likes to transition to cash games – even if it’s only part-time. However, many players learn that cash games are a completely different ballgame than tournaments. And so they may find that they’ve lost money overall after several thousand hands. Assuming you’re in this situation, here are some simple things you can do to break out of the funk.

Study Questionable Hands/Decisions after a Session

One of the quickest ways to improve your play is by dedicating more time to post-session studying. This is especially true when you run into questionable hands and decisions during a session, and aren’t sure whether or not you made the smart play. That said, make a note of these hands and look them over later.

Try Tightening up your Range

Many times, players’ cash game losses can be attributed to playing with too loose of a range. More specifically, they fall into the trap of thinking their opponents are frequently bluffing or playing with a loose range themselves. The likely scenario though is that they’re playing the cards as they are, and/or playing off your tendencies. In any case, slightly limit the range of hands you’re playing for a while and see if this makes a difference.

Invest in Poker Training

One more thing that we’d like to mention as far as improving your cash game play goes involves poker training. Sites like DragTheBar can be instrumental in helping to improve your play, and it’s definitely worth the $30 monthly fee to watch videos and instructions from top online poker pros. Furthermore, it’s an even better deal when you consider that there’s free poker training available through Carbon. Taking this into account, you should definitely try poker training out at least once in your life.

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Posted by PokerPop on 11th May 2012

The past several months have seen Carbon Poker work hard to improve their tournament lineup. This is really apparent when you look at the fact that they’re now offering a $150,000 Guaranteed tournament every Sunday. The $150k is one of the biggest weekly online poker tournaments in the industry, so it’s definitely worth looking at closely.

Getting to the main point, Carbon has added some more impressive events to their tournament schedule. Dubbed the “7 Weekly,” these tourneys give players a chance to compete for major prize money every night in a variety of different events. That said, here’s a quick look at the 7 Weekly schedule (all times are server time):

Monday @ 19:00 – $15,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Freezeout tournament, $60 buy-in

Tuesday at 19:00 – $15,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Heads-up, $109 buy-in

Wednesday at 19:00 – $25,000 Guaranteed “Midweek Monster” NL Hold’em, $60 buy-in

Thursday at 19:00 – $15,000 Guaranteed “Thursday PL Omaha”, $109 buy-in

Friday at 18:00 – $15,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Short-handed tournament, $109 buy-in

Saturday at 18:00 – $15,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Turbo tournament, $109 buy-in

Sunday at 16:00 – $20,000 Guaranteed HORSE tournament, $215 buy-in

If the buy-ins for these poker tournaments are a little out of your range, don’t forget that there are plenty of satellites running for each event. To play in these satellites, make sure to sign up at Carbon Poker – which puts you in line for a 100% Carbon Poker bonus up to $600 – then visit the lobby. Once here, go to the Tournaments and Satellites tabs, which will bring up the full list of satellites.

No matter whether you’re an Omaha specialist or just somebody looking to work on heads-up play, you should find a 7 Weekly tournament that suits your tastes. More importantly, you’ll find a ton of money available in these events, which could give your bankroll a major boost!

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Posted by PokerPop on 10th May 2012

One topic that we like to keep up on at Carbon Poker involves the Big Game in Macau. Not too long ago, we discussed the rise of 19-year-old Norwegian player Ole-Kristian Nergard and his success amongst the world’s best rounders. This time around, we’d like to talk about an even bigger story, which involves Tom Dwan winning a USD $3.8 million pot!

How it happened

As usual, this past week has seen a lot of high stakes poker action at StarWorld Hotel’s Poker King Club. Blinds were sitting at around USD $1300/$2600 (HKD $10,000/$20,000) at the time of the $3.8 million hand.

Dwan was dealt A-T while a random Asian businessman held an A-2 combo preflop. Usually this kind of action is nothing to get excited about, but the A-T-2 flop made things a little more interesting with both players holding a two pair.

With such an aggressive game going on, both players thought their two pair was top hand, and they got all of their money into the middle. Both the turn and river had no effect on either player’s hand, thus leaving Dwan with a massive USD $3.8 million (HKD $30 million) pot.

Is this the Biggest Macau Pot Ever?

As with any live cash game, most of the accounts at these tables are a little sketchy since you don’t exactly have a team of reporters standing nearby. Furthermore, the players themselves are pretty tight-lipped about what happens in the Macau Big Game, so it’s hard to get a 100% accurate story.

In any case, several news outlets have verified Tom Dwan’s $3.8 million pot, which is truly impressive. Essentially Dwan earned more money in a single poker hand than most people will earn in their lifetime. And the big question revolves around where this hand ranks all-time in the Macau cash games.

Based on everything we’ve reported in the past, this pot would be much larger than the one Sam Trickett won last month. For our money, Dwan’s USD $3.8m hand is probably the biggest that Macau has seen thus far.

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Posted by PokerPop on 8th May 2012

While playing in huge online poker tournaments like the $150,000 Guaranteed at Carbon Poker is always great, some players long to make a name for themselves in the live tournament world as well. After all, it’s usually the live stars that we see inking major sponsorship deals and appearing in the news.

Taking this into account, you might be very interested to know that Carbon Poker is currently running lots of WSOP satellites. Some of the common Carbon Poker WSOP satellites that you’ll find include $11 and $60 events, which enable you to win coupons for the main $530 WSOP qualifier. And it’s definitely worth making it to the WSOP ME, as you’ll see below.

$64.5 Million up for grabs

The primary reason why you should be interested in Carbon Poker’s 2012 WSOP satellites lies in the fact that the 2011 WSOP Main Event offered a massive $64,531,000 prize pool. With such a huge amount of money available, it’s no surprise that eight players were turned into millionaires through this poker tournament.

The biggest winner of them all was German Pius Heinz, who took the 2011 Main Event title along with $8,715,638. What’s interesting about Heinz is that he was merely a semi-pro before tasting WSOP greatness, which shows that you don’t have to be a superstar to win the Main Event.

How to play in the Carbon Poker WSOP Satellites

If you want to follow in Pius Heinz’s footsteps and play poker in the 2012 Main Event, you should first sign up at Carbon and create an account. By doing this, you’ll also be eligible for the potential $600 Carbon Poker bonus. Once you’ve created an account, visit the Carbon lobby and select the Tournaments and Satellites tabs to find WSOP satellites. There are going to be plenty of qualifiers running up until the WSOP Main Event in July, so make sure to check out the Carbon lobby between now and then.

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Posted by PokerPop on 7th May 2012

Just last week we discussed the concept of fold equity, or the additional value that you get from a hand when an opponent might fold to your raise. If you’re not totally clear on fold equity, we definitely recommend that you review this thoroughly.

Getting to the point at hand, fold equity is especially important in poker tournaments as the blinds increase. After all, most players’ tournament life hangs in the balance at this stage, and they’re not going to call raises with ATC. Of course, the reverse happens too where deepstacks can be overly-conservative, which leads to a lot of folding. Keeping this in mind, let’s discuss a couple types of tournaments where you gain extra fold equity.

Turbos

In general, there will be a ton of scenarios where you get fold equity in turbo tournaments. The blinds are increasing rapidly in turbos, which leads to a lot of short-stacked play among everybody. And the better you understand fold equity in these events, the better long-term results you’re going to have.

For instance, if you’re in a super turbo where everybody starts off with 20bb, it won’t take many blind levels before the average stack is a short stack. At this point, having an 8bb stack isn’t that bad because of the fold equity you get by raising in various situations. Assuming you were on the button preflop in an unraised pot, and the blinds had stacks of 6bb and 9bb, you could no doubt get some fold equity here.

Deepstacked

People often say that you should play fairly conservatively in deepstacked poker tournaments – especially in the early stages. However, there are plenty of situations where you can gain some fold equity in the early going when others are playing conservatively.

For example, if everybody’s starting with 200bb in a deepstacked tournament, and you’ve got some really tight players to your left, you can get a lot of fold equity from the cut-off and button. Just be careful not to bet out too much when stealing in these deepstacked situations before the risk could be much greater than the reward.

You can get good fold equity in any type of poker tournament, but you should especially be mindful of this concept in deepstacked and turbo events.

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