Home / Poker News January 2010 / Winning players not welcome at iPoker, UBOC update
Winning players not welcome at iPoker, UBOC update
Posted by: James Carter. - Sun, 2010-01-31 09:37
In a move unprecedented in
online poker, iPoker network member VC Poker has moved to block successful players’ access to its cash tables. Ever since it’s stopped offering its players rakeback, the iPoker network has been eyeing such a move. Getting rid of popular site NoiQ Poker was in line with the same policy. That online poker site apparently attracted a disproportionally high number of winning players, upsetting the fish balance within the network.
Several of VC Poker’s players have received an email, which informed them of the fact that the iPoker network would institute a new policy in 2010. Players will be categorized according to the new house rules, and individual sites which have a higher proportion of winning players than losing ones will be penalized.
In order to avoid the penalty, Victor Chandler was left with no alternative but to artificially reduce the number of winning players that frequent the site by restricting access to their cash game tables.
The good news for these successful players is that they’ll still be allowed to play in tournaments, although I personally doubt any of them will be willing to.
How this new shift in policy will impact the iPoker network remains to be seen, although punishing players for being successful is certainly not something that is likely to go down well with the online poker community.
As good iPoker players were given the boot at cash tables all over the network,
Ultimate Bet’s Online Championship rolled on unfazed. Event #13, the $150+$12 NL Holdem one was hosted by Matt Vengrin. The event offered a $30,000 guarantee, but the 289 players who registered for it took the overall prize-pool to $42,900.
Player MOTA_L_ZORRO walked away with the $11,754 first prize, but there was at least one more ecstatic player among the finishers, CLOWNFISH411, who managed to knock out Vengrin and to collect his $150 bounty.
Event #14, hosted by Adam Levy was a much more popular one. It attracted a starting field of 511 players, who all contributed $1,000+$50 to generate a prize-pool of $511k.
An impressive selection of professionals bellied up to the tables in this one, led by Ultimate Bet’s own Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke.
