carbon bankroll

i have some questions here, that are kinda general, maybe not exactly relating to carbon, forgive me for this now. this all comes to mind from the "are freerolls worth it" thread in gen poker forum.

ok, long story short. haven't had a carbon account very long. i won $1 in a $50 fr...i got the account because the CC freerolls are there on fridays....if i get the chance to play in them. i won $5 for 5th place in a CC fr...so i had $6. i noticed they changed the format to their fun steps from "have to get first place to move on from step 1" to "top 3 move on"...so i have $17 now...meaning i've won 11 step 3's. ok that's cool...i have $17 from nothing in a relatively short amount of time without buying into anything. i've looked at the options...there aren't many at this time. they have a 6th cent +1 rebuy (11 cents) tournament...ok, that's totally not worth my time even though i'm well over 100 buy-ins (including the re-buy) for that thing. that have some other turbo tourneys like the quarter quickly...that doesn't seem worth my time. they have the fast fifty sng's....50 cents plus 10c rake...i don't really care for that. they do have double or nothin $1+.08 sng's. i don't really care for double or nothin's...i've said this before, it doesn't feel like poker...though i'm pretty sure i "get it" as far as how i should play one. say in the next week or two, i get up to $22. (here's one question) is 20 buy-ins good br practice for double or nothin's? i like to have at least 40 buy-ins for regular sng's. i'll put it this way...getting to $22+ isn't a problem, so under 20 buy-ins isn't an option, but i'm pretty conservative, and aside from drunken "hey, go for it with $2!!!" encouragements, if anyone has any suggestions for how you should be rolled for don's, let me know. i'd like to work my way up to enough buy-ins to work on playing ring games...something i'm usually pretty nervous about because i just don't have much experience at it other than a general idea how i'd play it. i think the lowest stakes they have there are 4NL. so at a very minimum, i'm looking at needing $80-100. i think its a pretty cool project though, building from nothing...no goals for millions or anything, just tryin to build my way on up and feel good about it...or fail and not feel bad about it....either way, want to be responsible. if anyone has any other suggestions, or thinks the 6th cent or quarter quickly or the .50+.10rake is somehow worth it, please let me know and why you think so, because i just don't see it.

also, just this past friday, got home in time to get to play (though i was removed rather quickly) the cc friday fr...i noticed, on my little thing with my name and junk, i had half a bronze star. like i said, i've never paid to play a game there, i never deposited, i've only played some fr's here and there, and a bunch of fun steps...and maybe 4 or 5 cc fr's. i always assumed those pokerstars had something to do with amount of rake paid. ok, i was wrong, i checked the faq, and it said something about accolades and good play...that didn't make much sense, so i emailed support. i eventually got an email back saying they were unable to provide the formula for which pokerstars are accumulated but "if you continue to play well you will earn stars"...that wasn't really good enough of an answer for me. so i found the merge networks website, and they basically had a pretty vague statement about pokerstars and accolades. anyone who plays at the merge network or carbon have any idea what in the hell these things mean other than "play well and you will earn pokerstars randomly"? because i haven't even paid rake once....you'd think they'd be handing them out to anyone paying, and maybe they are, i don't know. i really don't care whether i have one and what color or how many, but since a half of one just showed up at random...i've been wondering what was taken into account...number of hands played, winning those fun steps, or what...i obviously haven't done anything spectacular. oh well...concluding my most unprepared and random of thread creations...thank you

I'd say 20 BIs for the Double or Nothings is fine, just play tight.

Also, try playing some microstakes ring games. .02/.04 PLO8 is pretty soft on Carbon.


I wish I knew more about the pokerstars system, myself. I just got up to 1/2 silver star, but not really sure what that means. I have been playing very well over the past couple of weeks (Just came in 2nd in a $1250 guarantee Tuesday night)