Why should we take funds off carbon? I heard they are accepting U.S. players again. I do wonder why more players don't play there seeing that IMO the competition is softer than most other sites.

Hey,

I have been playing CG on carbon since April of this year and i am very satisfied! Have started with NL25 and try me now on NL200. My goal is to shoot NL500 until the end of 2017.

Anyone in similar situation they will talk about hands, strategy etc.? Together we get stronger!


Best regards

and it won't let me log back in.
this has been happening a lot more lately hasn't it?

down for me also, same deal

Down for me as well.

now I'm trying to find something to do around the house and bored.
It's friday and I wanted to play!

Looks like I'll be roaming around to play live.

Down for me, too. I keep trying to log in and it's just loading. Never opens.

Pretty frustrating.

Ignition, WPN, and BetOnline are all other options for American players.

WPN is having their OSS series right now.

Just check their Twitter. Oh wait it hasn't been updated since 2015 lol

Yeahhh I'm gonna switch over to America's Cardroom I think. Good idea?

I finally got Parallels for Mac so I can play ACR on the new MAC OSX. The tournament structures on ACR are far lower variance, and the game selection and player pool is far superior. You can also actually use your player points and turn them into cash. I think ACR is the better site by a long shot.

Everyone on here go to ACr plz, especially for cash, to bad the German bots won't follow.

Plus rakeback right? The one nice part about carbon was the bitcoin deposit bonuses. Granted you have to play casino games to release it but it still results in some extra $ for poker every time. (sit at a table with your max buy in + play in casino at same time + top off stack at table as you win).

We have a nice little card room here in Ventura County but I didn't want to leave the house today.
Although I am out of beer and chocolate so I might have to leave anyway.

Still down

This is agonizing. Anyone get paid for the Thursday night football contest this week? I didnt win but curious if anyone did.

OK. I see I'm not alone.

I also can't login on either Carbon or Sportsbook ATM . And yes, the Merge online checker shows that they are up.

I've been playing on Merge for years. I'm primarily a rec player, but have continually tried to improve my play by joining 2+2, reading and studying poker strategy, watching the pros play on tv, and playing in a home game. Sportsbook was the first online site site where I deposited real money in 2009, because it supposedly had the softest games, since their players were thought to be mostly sports betters who played poker recreationally. At the time I was also on Stars and Tilt, but hardly ever deposited there, since then there were so many opportunities to earn real money from the many freerolls, and I was a beginning player who didn't have much money to lose.

I still have a 'play money' account on Stars, in hopes that someday we in the US will be able to play there again with the entire site's membership (unlike NJ & Nevada, who can only play with others in their state), and I play there once in awhile. I refuse to buy any play chips, but between winning and taking advantage of their 12,500 free chips every 4 hours, I have over 2 million, which I find to be quite sufficient. I enjoy games where I get to go against a mix of US and ROW players, and like badugi, stud, mixed games and the like, that aren't offered on any of the US facing sites (Merge has a few tournys with some of these). I also like Omaha, which is a poor stepchild on most US friendly sites, if it's even offered.

Of course, there are always idiot maniacs in freerolls or play money games (as well as micro stakes cash too ), but these days many of the Stars play money players are quite skilled and seem to take the games more seriously than they did when the site came back online after Black Friday. I enjoy playing there when I can get at a table with relatively skilled, serious players. If there are too many maniacs, I just move to a different table. I'm playing there right now, since I can't get onto Merge. Yes, I like to win money, but being a rec player, I also just enjoy playing and often get bored with Hold 'em.

I set up my account on Carbon about five years ago, when it seemed they had a lot more to offer than Sportsbook, including rakeback (which Sportsbook never offered), and appeared to be more professionally managed than the other Merge sites at the time. Of course they haven't had rakeback in a long time. I especially liked it when Carbon had their free HUD's for Hold 'Em and Omaha. They discontinued those, I think at the same time that Merge banned all HUDs earlier this year. Over the last year or so, Carbon also has taken the 'more rec friendly site' trend to the extreme, taking away notes, color boxes, tags, and virtually any type of in-game ability to categorize player types. Strangely, those tools are still available on Sportsbook, so since the player pool is the same, I prefer playing there now.

Players have been abandoning Merge for years and they never had that many people to begin with. It's gotten much worse especially lately, as more and more rats desert the long sinking ship. It keeps getting harder and harder to find enough players for micro cash games (NL10 & NL25) where 6-max predominates, SNG's often have considerable wait times to fill up, and most tournys have mainly been left to the few pros still around or those with too much time on their hands, since many now have late reg of over 3 hours, up from the previous 2 hours & 20 minutes. One thing that I've noticed lately is a slight return of ROW players, mostly German, after years of seeing only US players.

I hope that Merge can still somehow get its act together. I hated Bovada (Ignition) years ago, and that was before their anonymous players crap and such, and I don't find it any more appealing today. ACR/Winning never seems to have fully have gotten off the ground. So I don't see any real choice of sites for me as a US player if Merge finally goes down and stays down.

Someone tweet @MergeGaming and tell them to get their **** together

Nope, you're not alone.

Bleh, 4 hour outage now? On Friday night?

I hope it's killing them as much as it is me.

Huh?