The online poker industry witnessed a dramatic shakeup this week as former Cake Poker skins SportsBook.com and PlayersOnly completed their transition to the Merge Network. The winner in the move? Players at both rooms.

Competition between companies is generally thought to result in greater value for consumers, and that’s certainly the case with Merge’s acquisition of Player’s Only and SportsBook.com. For players on the Merge Network, the result is a larger player base, significant bonuses as Merge attempts to lock in the new players and, most importantly, a 5% bump in rakeback at Merge. For players on Cake, expect bonuses, freerolls and, of course, their massive $150K Rake Race as the network attempts to maintain and expand their player base.

For the Merge Network, PTP recommends playing on Carbon Poker. For the Cake Network, PTP recommends playing on Cake Poker.

Let’s take a look at some of the specific benefits players can take advantage of:

Value on the Merge Network

Higher Rakeback Rates at Merge: The rate at Carbon Poker is now 35%, up from 30%. Even better, Carbon pays daily, directly into your player account. Sign up for Carbon Poker rakeback here.

100k Freeroll: Sunday, May 30th @ 14:00 (Carbon Time), Merge will be hosting a 100k freeroll with a top prize of $20,000. Qualifiers are running now, or you can earn your way in by making a deposit, which leads us to…

Deposit Bonus: Make either a first deposit or a re-deposit between April 15th 00:01 and May 28th 23:59 (use the code 100MAYPK) and you’ll get a 100% deposit bonus (maximum bonus is $500) and a tournament entry coupon for the massive qualifier for the freeroll (Saturday, May 29th at 17:00).

Better Game Selection: Carbon traffic has already exploded, with tons of new games at higher limits and far more games in the low-to-mid-stakes arena. Expect these games to be a bit less-reg filled than your typical games at Stars or Full Tilt Poker, which means better chance of softer games for you.

Value on the Cake Network

150k Points Race: All April, Cake is giving away $150k to their top point-earners. Even though April is a few weeks in, there’s still tens of thousands of dollars to be won.

When you consider the fact that bonuses are not deducted from your rakeback at Cake, this means you could easily be earning a rakeback rate of double or more if you place near the top of the race. Sign up for Cake Rakeback here to learn more about the 150k race.

Gold Cards Increase In Value: If you have Cake Gold cards, April is a great month – and if you don’t, you can still earn them. Cake is seriously bumping the value of Cards with cash raffles and special tournaments with tons of added value.

We’d expect that Cake will roll out even more promos to attract and retain players in the upcoming weeks, so now is probably the best time to sign up at Cake if you aren’t already there. 33% rakeback + bonuses + a massive rake race = a pretty excellent value.

Related Links:

Sign up for Cake Rakeback here

Sign up for Carbon Poker rakeback here.

When ranking these rooms, we’re considering the following criteria: softness of games, value of promotions, rakeback and cashout ease. The following rooms made our top list: Bodog Poker, Carbon Poker, Cake Poker, Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Ultimate Bet / Absolute Poker.

#6: Carbon Poker
The flagship room of the Merge Poker Network, Carbon has a lot going for it. The cash games are relatively soft and the tournament lobby has much weaker competition than you would find at a room like PokerStars. Their promotions are generally the most generous of any major room and can amount to hundreds, if not thousand in dollars of extra value monthly.

Biggest plus: Carbon offers 30% rakeback, and it’s paid daily, directly into your account. On the downside, Carbon cashouts, while reliable, are a little slower than the average cashout for the high-ranked rooms. Also, Carbon has a smaller traffic base than, say, Full Tilt, so you won’t get steady action at higher-stakes games.

–>Sign Up For Carbon Here

#5: PokerStars
The giant of online poker does have a lot to offer players. The lobby is stuffed with games, so you never have to worry about finding the game and the limit you want. The tournament lobby is insanely active as well, with daily tournaments for the most obscure formats alongside hundreds of holdem tournaments a day. Cashouts are fast and available via a few methods.

Promotions at Stars aren’t as frequent as at some other rooms, but they do offer an excellent VIP points program that allows you to accumulate credit as you play toward a variety of merchandise and the like.

So why so low on the chart? A couple of reasons. First, PokerStars doesn’t offer rakeback, and that’s a huge minus. Second, games at PokerStars are filled with strong players, regulars who crowd the table and make it tough for other players to make a profit.

–>Download PokerStars Here.

#4: Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt and PokerStars basically have the same pros: a very busy lobby with a wide variety of games, a strong slate of tournament offerings and reliable, quick cashouts. FTP goes a step beyond, however, and offers 27% rakeback, a massive advantage over PokerStars.

FTP also has a generally more aggressive promotional approach, with more frequent deposit bonuses and special promos that add more value for the player.

Downside: FTP has notoriously tough cash games stuffed with regulars even at the lower limits. The tournament lobby is also generally tough, and doesn’t offer much in the way of overlays or added value.

–>Sign Up For FTP Here

#3: Bodog Poker
Bodog was left for dead by many a few years ago, but their poker room has continued to grow and provide excellent opportunities for profit to players. The highlight of the room is very weak competition at low to mid stakes cash games and a tournament schedule that regularly includes some of the weakest fields and most generous overlays available online.

Bodog’s cashouts have improved dramatically over the last year and now boast one of the top turnaround times in the industry.

Bodog does not offer rakeback publicly, but PTP does have an exclusive Private VIP offer. Get more info on that deal here. Downsides: lack of game selection at mid limits and a weak SNG lobby mean you can’t always find the game you want.

–>Get Info On Our Private VIP Deal For BodogPoker

#2: Ultimate Bet / Absolute Poker
Home to tournament superstar Phil Hellmuth, these two rooms form the CEREUS poker network and are a very attractive option for poker players. The tournament and cash lobbies are both fairly active at low to medium stakes, although not quite as active as PokerStars. Cashouts are lightening-fast, with turnaround times that are generally quicker than any other room.

The network offers frequent promotions and has a very generous VIP program. You can also get 30% rakeback that’s paid directly into your account.

Game selection is a bit of an issue at mid to higher stakes, but the majority of players should find that UB and Absolute offer a compelling alternative to the major online poker rooms.

–>Sign Up For AP / UB Here

#1 Cake Poker
The general consensus among players who aggressively seek out value is that Cake Poker is the place to be in online poker at the moment. The cash games are untapped, the tournaments have frequent overlays and very weak competition, and the regular promotions give players tons of value on a regular basis.

The room also offers 30% rakeback to players when you sign up through a rakeback provider like PTP.

Cashouts aren’t as quick as UB, but Cake hasn’t been plagued by the check delays that some other rooms have experienced during the last few months. All in all, the softness of the games, the value added by promos and rakeback along with reasonable quick cashouts make Cake Poker the number one choice available currently for online poker players in the US.

–>Sign Up For Cake Here

Curious about other rooms that offer rakeback? View our complete list of offers.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you’re playing some no limit holdem. You raise before the flop and only one opponent calls. The flop comes and you bet. Your opponent folds, but asks the dealer to ‘rabbit hunt’. In this case, the dealer would deal the turn and the river to see how the hand would have turned out if your opponent called.

Rabbit hunting is generally frowned upon in live casinos, as it slows down the game and can discourage action. The practice is fairly common in home games, and is almost non-existent online. Only one major room – Carbon Poker – offers rabbit hunting as a software feature.

The tournament in question: The Carbon Poker 50k guarantee. It’s a new tournament on the Carbon (Merge Network) schedule that runs Sundays at 4pm EST with a $109 buy in.

What’s so special about it? Well, you can buy in with cash or VIP points, which is nice, but completely dwarfed by another feature of the tournament: last week the room only managed to attract 194 players. The result: the tournament missed the guarantee by over $28,000.

I know what you’re thinking – the math doesn’t quite add up there. That’s because the tournament isn’t a freezeout – you can rebuy up to three times in the first hour. But here’s the beauty part – of those 194 players, only 23 rebuys were taken. That number means a couple of things: a lot of people playing the tournament are playing above their comfort level, buy in wise, and a lot of people playing the tournament are likely playing far too tight for a tournament that allows three rebuys.

The overlay will probably be a little smaller this week due to the massive size of the overlay last week, but even if it drops to 20k or so (which is what I’d expect based on the MTT base of Carbon), the overlay combined with the soft field makes this tournament an insane value.

Where else are you going to find a $109 that you can buy into with comp points that has a field of 194 players and a top prize of 15k? Nowhere.

As if you needed another reason to try this room, you can also get rakeback at Carbon Poker – 30% paid daily into your account, tournament and SNG fees included.

Rakeback at Merge (we suggest the flagship room Carbon Poker) was already an appealing offer. Players received 30% rakeback on all their cash play and that rakeback was paid daily. Now players can still get 30% and daily pay on their cash play and also get the same great deal on their tournament fees. Fees for both MTTs and SNGs are included in the new offer.

Carbon Poker accepts players from most of the US and has a variety of deposit and cash out options. Read our full review of Carbon Poker here.

Carbon also has what is currently the largest bad beat jackpot online that we’re aware of, topping out at over one million dollars currently.

Sign up for Carbon Poker Rakeback.

Details
The Carbon Poker Bad Beat jackpot is now over a million dollars. Players can qualify for the jackpot on specially marked ‘Bad Beat’ tables that are available for both no limit and limit games. When you take a look at the requirements, it’s easy to understand why it hasn’t hit for quite some time:

# The losing hand must be at least a Four of a Kind 7’s
# The winning hand must be at least a Four of a Kind 8’s
# Both the winning and losing hands must include both hole cards, and in the case of a Four of a Kind must include a pocket pair.
# At least four players must be dealt in at the start of the hand
# The hand must have generated jackpot rake (ie. $0.50)
# Two or more players must be active at the end of the hand, and it must go to showdown

The jackpot is distributed as follows: 30% to the loser of the hand, 17.5% to the winner, 17.5% to the other players at the table, 20% to reseeding the jackpot and 10% to the room.

Where’s the value?
The jackpot is obviously tough to hit, and under normal conditions there wouldn’t be all that much of an appeal. However, Carbon has a few things going for it. First off is the size of the jackpot – approaching half a million dollars. Second is the fact that Carbon is a fairly small room, so you can cover most (or all) of the Bad Beat jackpot tables when you play with relative ease. Third is that the games are pretty soft and the stakes are fairly small (limit tops out general at 5/10 and NL at 2/4), so you can cover all of the tables without straining your bankroll.

Availability
Bad Beat jackpot games are generally running at all times on Carbon, with the largest number running during normal peak hours (afternoon and evening EST).

Extras
Carbon offers rakeback (30%) and pays that rakeback daily. They also have lots of smaller buy in tournaments with solid overlay values. They also have recurring bonuses, both for first deposits and reloads. Like many mid-tier rooms, they’re very good about rewarding players on a regular basis.

Sign up for Carbon Poker Rakeback here.

Details
The Carbon Poker Bad Beat jackpot is fast approaching half a million dollars. Players can qualify for the jackpot on specially marked ‘Bad Beat’ tables that are available for both no limit and limit games. When you take a look at the requirements, it’s easy to understand why it hasn’t hit for quite some time:

# The losing hand must be at least a Four of a Kind 7’s
# The winning hand must be at least a Four of a Kind 8’s
# Both the winning and losing hands must include both hole cards, and in the case of a Four of a Kind must include a pocket pair.
# At least four players must be dealt in at the start of the hand
# The hand must have generated jackpot rake (ie. $0.50)
# Two or more players must be active at the end of the hand, and it must go to showdown

The jackpot is distributed as follows: 30% to the loser of the hand, 17.5% to the winner, 17.5% to the other players at the table, 20% to reseeding the jackpot and 10% to the room.

Where’s the value?
The jackpot is obviously tough to hit, and under normal conditions there wouldn’t be all that much of an appeal. However, Carbon has a few things going for it. First off is the size of the jackpot – approaching half a million dollars. Second is the fact that Carbon is a fairly small room, so you can cover most (or all) of the Bad Beat jackpot tables when you play with relative ease. Third is that the games are pretty soft and the stakes are fairly small (limit tops out general at 5/10 and NL at 2/4), so you can cover all of the tables without straining your bankroll.

Availability
Bad Beat jackpot games are generally running at all times on Carbon, with the largest number running during normal peak hours (afternoon and evening EST).

Extras
Carbon offers rakeback (30%) and pays that rakeback daily. They also have lots of smaller buy in tournaments with solid overlay values. They also have recurring bonuses, both for first deposits and reloads. Like many mid-tier rooms, they’re very good about rewarding players on a regular basis.

Sign up for Carbon Poker Rakeback here.

Where’s the value?
Merge doesn’t support PokerTracker and has terrible hand histories – a feature that keeps all the multi-tabling grinders at bay. The network also has a lot of new skins (many of which have a casino component), which keeps fresh traffic coming in as those sites roll out attractive initial bonuses. Finally, the network pays rakeback daily and has frequent deposit bonuses, cycling money back into play more rapidly.

These facts, along with a host of smaller factors, have resulted in some of the softest no limit games at and about the 1/2 limit online. You’ll see plays you haven’t seen since the Party Poker days: lots of passive play, tons of call downs, and the like. There are some tough players, but they’re the exception and not the rule.

Availability
Games at these stakes run pretty consistently on Carbon, although you might have trouble finding a 2/4 table or higher during off-peak times.

Extras
Carbon offers rakeback (30%) and pays that rakeback daily. They also have lots of smaller buy in tournaments with solid overlay values.

The 2/4 NL max buy in at Carbon is $500.

Sign up for Carbon Poker Rakeback here.