First Look At Carbon’s Mobile Poker Client

Carbon Poker have become the first of the offshore US-friendly sites to offer a mobile poker game. This can be played in your browser, and handles cash games only at this point. There are also promises of full apps and tournament play in the future. I had a try via both my Android Phone and iPad, and here are my initial thoughts and some screen shots.

Update: Carbon are no longer allowing US players and appears to be winding down completely. For the latest US poker updates and news on the best sites, check out my main US Poker Page here. 

I tried the iPad first – this is the larger-screened iPad4.

Things went very fast (except for triggering Siri a couple of times while trying to take screenshots). You simply go to the Carbon Homepage using the built in Safari browser, and they detect that you are using a mobile device and point you in the right direction. You do get the option to go to the full website from this screen in case you were there to get some information or whatever.

Next you get a log-in screen. There is no registration available, so you’ll need your log in name and password from the download client in order to get further. After this you see a clean lobby view – here is a screenshot from around 10am here in Europe (which explains the lack of action).

I did choose a buy-in where there were no tables available first time, then went for the lower buy-ins where I was sat immediately at a table – so no table or seat selection is possible via this app. An option to auto-post blinds pops up, which will post you out of turn if you click yes (it is not clear where you sit at this point, so you might well be posting UTG).

Once you get going the game is actually pretty smooth, most of the betting options are hidden behind the bet or raise buttons, and you can click for half / 2/3rds / half pot and so on. If you look at the lower left of the screenshot below you will see that the animations which the downloadable client is famous for are available on the mobile client too.

Unfortunately, the smart new mobile client did not stop me losing to a flush with my rivered straight a few hands after this one – ah well, fish on the download client, and still a fish playing mobile poker!

Carbon Poker Mobile Client On Android

Next, I tried the same application on my Galaxy S2 Mobile (yeah, I know, behind the times… I did try an iPhone, and just never really managed to gel with it!). This was not the happy experience of the iPad. To be fair this app is optimized for iOS devices, though there were a couple of very ugly moments to report.

First, the menus did not shrink to fit my screen. This is not the smallest smartphone screen, so there are no excuses really. I had to scroll left to get the full list from the lobby, and up a little bit to seen the action buttons in-game.

The real pain came after hitting the raise button (I had middle pair, and godammit, that’s good enough for a fat raise for me). The action buttons with half pot / pot and so on came up, but none of them were the exact right size for me. I hit the number and typed in ‘2’ (for a wild and crazy 2 dollar raise). It was not clear what to press next, so I tried a button which said next… which made my browser leave the game, head for a page which was not there, find it missing and throw me back to the log-in screen… while what I really wanted to do was c-bet my monster middle pair.

A very frustrating start, though this was probably user-error on my part.

Summing Up

• Great to see the first mobile app for US players.
• It worked great on my ipad.
• Worked on my Android phone, but only just
• No registration, you’ll need to get the computer download first
• This is only in beta, so lets hope some of the issues are solved soon

I’ll give it 6/10.

Head on over to the cool Carbon Poker for yourself and check it out – or alternatively see my detailed review (which will be updated over the next couple of days with information about this app).

GL at the (mobile) tables,

Mark