Party Poker Blog

Weee. I went in to check how many pages the latest Brandi thread had grown to (68, as of this moment) when I noticed that someone posted about alleged cheating at Ultimate Bet.

I say alleged because someone fanned the flames by posting an email from Phil Helmuth, conceding that cheating had occurred, which later turned out to be a fake. It was pretty well done - duped me.

Anyway, here's the thread if you wanna go dig in and watch the online poker detectives at work:
Suspicious Plays on UB 25/50 and 50/100

But really. Good grief. Absolute and now possibly UB?

Did you know that they are both owned by the same firm?

"Tokwiro Enterprises is a private company that owns two online poker cardrooms, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet." from wikipedia.

Ah well, hopefully the above is a non-story but nothing surprises me anymore.

Plus, apparently nobody gives a red nickel about this. Which is surprising. I mean, how in the hell does one of the major online poker sites get exposed for massive cheating and their player base isn't affected? They are still in the top ten online sites, for Gods sakes. Honestly, now.

I suppose this just goes to show how deeply and profoundly retarded your average online poker player is. I can come to no other conclusion.

And sure, Absolute was just levied with a 500k fine after an admission of guilt. Big honking deal. If you want to read the full report it's in PDF format at the Kahnawake Gaming Commission web site.

Yawn. Nothing to see here.

Err, but wait! Here's a pretty sickening post from Pocketfives from November. And Gank is a well-known poster so it's not completely off-base, but then again, I can't verify the veracity of the following post in anyway.

Enjoy the games at Ultimate Bet!

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The UB skinny: An insider talks
by gank on 11/9/2007 23:32



Well, I guess I have become the reporter everyone trusts to talk about what goes on behind the scenes while protecting my source's identity, as I have been contacted by and had a long conversation with an employee at UB who wished to shed light on the company. Again, I will protect my source and not be releasing his/her name to anyone, ever.

I will list the all the important points from the conversation as best I can.

1. It is possible to have upto 25 usernames registered to 1 players name on UB, they know about this and are ok with it as a company.

2. If someone does have multiple accounts, even if they are registered to the same name and use the same IP address, they are permitted to play at the same table, cash games and sitNgos and tournies. UB knows about this, and are OK with it.

3. Although my source is not sure if hole cards could be seen during the hand by a superuser account, my source does know that as soon as a hand is over with, UB personell has access to see everyones holecards even those that didnt go to showdown. This has been used by some UB higher ups at times while they were playing. Not a direct form of cheating, but definitely an unfair advantage if the person has access to this while playing.

4. A higher level executive was fired not to long ago, because her 19 year old son, who she got a job at UB, was caught cheating games at the UB office. It is unclear to my source if holecards were able to be seen during the hand, but it is a possibility. He definitely was cheating customers somehow, maybe a cobination of the above things mentioned at the very least.

edit: Another close, reliable source has just talked to me and told me "the woman's son had"administrative access" which let him see hole cards." and that the source "wouldn't besurprised if administrative access still exists" The person went on to say "there's also evidence that at least a couple months agoAJ (Green) was overseeing day to day operations"

5. "Someone" was brought on board by UB to help clean up the site. He figured out the problem was that they were using a version of the software from 1998 that had security holes in it(i.e. no security firewalls were/could be put in place) that couldnt be fixed without a complete overhaul of the software, which was estimated at costing 6 million dollars. UB decided it was not in their best interests to upgrade the software.

6. My source also voiced their concern for my safety for vocalizing these points.

I bring this to light because I feel that this is the important stuff that our community needs to be aware of.

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