Home / Poker News July 2008 / The Ultimate Bet scandal: another blow below the belt for online poker?
The Ultimate Bet scandal: another blow below the belt for online poker?
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2008-07-23 03:33
For the past 6 months we’ve all been pretty much in the know about things going wrong in Ultimate Bet’s back yard. Just how wrong they were though, was only fed to the public in chewable and easily digestible bits and pieces. How much is digestible when it comes to cheating in online poker is extremely relative however.
Much like yourselves, I too have been hearing this and that about the whole issue but I was truly astonished when I did some digging and found out that “super-user” abuse was not one isolated incident at UB (like the Absolute Poker incident about year ago). There was a whole list of user names made public, all belonging to people who had used them for cheating over a long period of time. How was that possible at poker room endorsed by Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke? How was that possible at any online poker room? Haven’t they learned anything from the AP scandal?
What’s even more astonishing than the above said fact is that Ultimate Bet is apparently content letting Duke take all the press-flak for it, and they’re absolutely in no hurry to dig to the bottom of this garbage dump.
The investigation they’ve been running for the past 6 months or so is nowhere near yielding any concrete data about any of the aspects concerned, as it is increasingly turning into a “sweep it under the rug and let’s hope everyone forgets about it” operation.
Quite naturally there’s a lot of buzz surrounding the issue on poker forums and blogs all over the Web, with people often questioning the moral integrity of the professional players caught in the middle. With Annie Duke clearly in damage control mode, Hellmuth is keeping a low profile, avoiding to address the issue in any shape or form.
The way I see it, neither Duke nor Hellmuth should at all be brought up in discussions concerning the scandal. They’ve done nothing wrong and therefore probably see no reason to opt out of a setup which continues to make them money.
Will this whole thing affect Ultimate Bet in a negative way? I’ll be frank: I have no idea. Being directly involved with the poker industry, I witnessed first hand as Absolute Poker’s popularity increased after their little close call with cheating and being caught. With that in mind, I’d say UB has nothing to fear in the long-run.
