As you’ve noticed, CarbonPoker is growing rapidly and more players are joining the room each day. To accommodate the growth, we’re expanding our guaranteed tournament schedule — that means more cash prizes every hour of the day!

There are freezeouts, rebuys, bounties, turbos and more. Play PLO, NL Hold’em, Heads up action. Basically, if you want to play it, we’ve got it — with guaranteed prizepools!

Don’t just sit there, get into the games!

Check out the Upcoming Tournaments page to see what’s going off next or login to your account to see the increased action.

Tournament Highlights (all times in CP SERVER TIME):

Daily Tourneys:

17:00 – $5K Guaranteed DeepStack (rebuys/addon) $60 Buyin

19:15 – $7,500 Guaranteed Freezeout $22 Buyin

21:00 $7,500 Guaranteed Freezeout $33 Buyin

23:30 $5,000 Guaranteed Turbo Freezeout $22 Buyin

Weekend Tournaments!

Saturday:

13:00 – $12,500 Saturday Guaranteed – 1 Rebuy/1 Addon $33 Buyin

Sunday:

15:00 Sunday $50,000 Guaranteed Freezeout $109 Buyin

Enjoy the action! Keep your eyes peeled for more from us soon.

You have 4 ways to get into the biggest freeroll that CarbonPoker has ever offered. The $100K event is going off on Sunday May 30th, 2010 at 14:00 Server Time. Clear your schedule, because this event is going to be big!

First Place: $20,000. We’re serious about this one.

Being a freeroll, this is obviously free to enter, but there are 4 ways to qualify:

View the Official $100,000 Freeroll Page for more official info.

1. Daily Freeroll Qualifiers

- As of April 15th, we’ll be running 5 daily Freeroll qualifiers in Tournaments >> Scheduled >> Special. Work your way through the Qualifying Step freerolls and get into the action!

2. Deposit Bonus Qualifiers

- Use the 100MAYPK bonus code between April 15 and May 28th and get a 100% (max $500) Reload Bonus and get a Tourney Entry coupon. Minimum $10 Deposit.

3. $100K Player Qualifier

4. Earn 45,000 VIP Points between 12:01am April 15th and 11:59pm May 29th and you’ll get a seat. Simply click the “register” button after earning those points.

As you can see, it’s easy to get into the $100K Freeroll, and you’ve got a lot of time to do it. Get pumped.

Things are currently rolling at CarbonPoker. We’re opening our doors to a flood of new players, action is increasing and more tourneys are starting.

One of the most exciting tournaments on the horizon is a $100,000 Freeroll! That’s right: $100,000 in prizes, and it’s totally free to enter.

1st prize in this freeroll? Glad you asked. That would be $20,000. Not bad for a freebie, friends.

Keep your eyes peeled and check us out on Facebook and Twitter to find out how you can get into the $100K Freeroll at Carbon. Details are coming soon!

When you follow us on Twitter, you get helpful links, exclusive tourneys, contests and coupons. But the best feature of Following CarbonPoker’s Twitter is the weekly $600+ Freeroll.

Fight it out on the virtual felts with other Tweeps for great coupons, accolades and more.

We get a ton of players in the tourney each and every Saturday, so get on Twitter and join in the fun.

Tourney Details:

Saturday at 14:30 Server Time (registration opens on Thursday @ 14:30). You get 2,500 starting chips and the game is Texas Hold’em. There are breaks every hour, so work on making it past the first 60minutes.

All you need to do to get in is:

1. Follow CarbonPoker

2. Go to the secure admin page and verify your account (check for that field)

3. Get yo’ coupon!

4. Play on Saturday!

As always, keep your eyes peeled for more Twitter promos. For a side-order of social media options, fan us on Facebook!

But that’s exactly what noted poker pro Eric Baldwin decided to do when he donated $200,000 to his old baseball team at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  The $200k that Baldwin donated will go towards renovating Prucha Field and adding new stadium lights to ensure that UW-Whitewater is able to host the NCAA Division III Midwest Regionals.

And while the donation might seem extremely large, the amount of money is an afterthought to Baldwin who feels that UW-Whitewater’s baseball program fueled his poker success.  Baldwin said, “I wouldn’t have had nearly the success I’ve had in poker if it weren’t for the Whitewater baseball program.  The program has taught me so much in terms of hard work and preparation, and how it can pay off for you.”

Eric Baldwin was a right fielder and team captain of the 2005 UW-Whitewater team that won the 2005 NCAA Division III Championship.  Baldwin’s senior year saw him carry a .356 batting average along with 13 homers and 70 RBI’s.  Not long after his baseball career ended, Baldwin decided to move to Las Vegas and pursue poker professionally.

The move definitely paid off as Baldwin was named the Card Player Magazine Player of the Year in 2009 after winning 4 major tournaments.  Baldwin’s biggest wins came in a WSOP $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event and the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Classic.  The two victories combined to earn Baldwin over $750k, which comprised over half of Eric’s $1.5 million in 2009 tournament winnings.  During his four-year poker career, Baldwin has earned over $3 million.

But just because you don’t hear people talking a whole lot about time management in poker does not mean that it’s not important.  In fact, knowing how to effectively manage your time in poker is a crucial skill for those who want to become great players.

How long can you stay focused?

Forget all of your grand illusions about being able to grind for 12 hours a day, and just concentrate on your past for a second.  What is the longest poker session where you were able to stay focused the whole time while still hauling in a profit?  Better yet, think about what your average session is where you can play comfortably without getting bored or distracted.

It’s very important that you be honest with yourself here because there are too many poker players who lie to themselves when answering this question.  If you are a semi-professional player who can focus clearly for 4 straight hours, then this number will give you a good idea as to how long you should play during a big winning session or a bad day where the cards just aren’t falling your way.

Likewise, a recreational player who has a full-time job might only be able to play for 1 or 2 hours a day before losing concentration.  Whatever the case may be with you, make sure to stick with your average session as a guideline because playing too long can force some very poor decisions.

How long to stay at a certain limit

Another concept of time management is knowing how much time to spend at a certain limit before moving up.  For instance, if you are a $2/$4 Limit Hold’em player, and are hoping to move up to $3/$6 Limit Hold’em, you will need to look at your life.

For instance, if you have a 9 – 5 job and can dedicate two hours a day to the game, you should spend at least 4 months at the $2/$4 limit before moving up.  On the other hand, if you’re someone who has saved up enough money and has made the decision to become a semi-professional player, you can dedicate more time to learning the game and thus can probably move up within two months.

Why not spend it with CarbonPoker and play in the Special $500 Added Boxing Day Freezeout Tourney. These are great because of the immediate value-added and low buy-in.

The Buy-In is only $5.50, so get in line for the best Boxing Day deal online.

Details:
Dec 26, 2009 | 17:00 Server Time
$5 + $0.50 / 550 VIP Points Buy-IN
Tournaments >> Scheduled >> Special
Special Accolade Awarded to winners

Good luck on the tables over the holidays. Posts are going to be a bit sparse as I’ll be sitting down for some annual family home games.

The most common scenario where we see people play scared is when they’re on the bubble of a poker tournament.  And it’s understandable why people would play scared on the bubble of any tournament since it is when several players will wind up the biggest losers.  Those who go out on the bubble will not only miss out on getting paid, but they’ll also have spent the most time in the tournament out of those who leave empty-handed.

Of course, this doesn’t give one an excuse to fold everything pre-flop in an attempt to back into the money.  Anybody who plays just to cash every time is going to wind up a losing poker player in the long run since you’ve got to make some final tables once in a while to make up for all of the times you didn’t make the money.

With that being said, there are times when it’s alright to play scared – especially if the money you stand to make from simply cashing is a significant amount.  For instance, if you normally play in $10 and $20 buy-in tourneys online, yet find yourself on the WSOP Main Event bubble where players make over $20,000 just for cashing, it could be acceptable to fold anything.

Another instance where playing “scared” would be okay is when you’re on a satellite tournament bubble.  In satellites, a set number of players will get the same prize so being extremely risky holds no advantage here since it’s not like first place will get anything better than second place.  So there is no point in going all-in unless first place is the only person who gets anything.

And by playing more hands per hour, a person stands to make a significant amount of cash!  Of course, the downside to playing multiple tables is that you can’t focus as much attention on each one so it’s important to find how many tables you can handle.  Here’s a quick look at how to find that number.

Study Your Winnings

By keeping track of your poker sessions over a certain amount of time, you can find how much money you’re making per hour.  For instance, if you played $1/$2 No-Limit Hold’em, and earned 8bb/100 hands, you’d be making $16 an hour.  If you added another table to the equation, and dropped to 6bb/100 hands, your rate per table would be $12.  However, you would also be playing 200 hands and would be making $24 an hour.  So the table increase would be a good decision in this instance.

But if you were to add a third table, and your win rate dropped to 3bb/100 hands, you would only be making $6 per table.  With all 3 tables combined, you would be earning $18 an hour, which is worse than the $24 an hour.  So the obvious decision would be to step back to two tables.

Consider the Effects of Multi-Tabling on You

Poker players can still relax when they’re playing one or two tables at a time (provided they aren’t losing major money).  But once you start adding even more tables into the mix, the game becomes a lot more stressful.

With this being the case, multi-tabling will eventually start cutting down on the length of your poker sessions.  So if you earn $40 an hour playing 5 tables, but can only handle playing 4 hours a day, it could be more profitable to cut back the amount of tables.

In a heads-up Grand Slam format, they duked it out for 5 hours, 6minutes and 21 seconds on the No Limit Hold’em tables. This capped of our successful 2009 Thanksgiving promo. It was banner month for SitNGos and players.

Each player came into the tourney with a unique starting stack, based on how they placed in the Leaderboard. As you will see below, whether you started with a big stack or a smaller one the most important part is getting into the event. Second place only started out with 5,731 chips — which was 42nd to begin with.

Congrats to the Top 8 players, who all pulled down $1K+ for their effort. Here is the list:

Top Finishers

yoyojen – $3,691.35 (24,416 Starting Chips)

Pius35 – $2,605. 59 (5,731 Starting Chips)

desertkitty – $1,628.49 (17,729 Starting Chips)

tlopeztlopez – $1,628.49 (3,562 Starting Chips)

buschmaqb – $1,085.66 (7,453 Starting Chips)

Jestersgirl – $1,085.66 (3,899 Starting Chips)

mazokie – $1,085.66 (42,445 Starting Chips)

vader46 – $1,085.66 (10,631 Starting Chips)