Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #22

By Adam Noone, 30/05/2008

Back in January allegations were first made that Ultimatebet had a problem with superusers on the site i.e. players who were able to gain knowledge of their opponents’ hole cards then use this information to make easy money from high stakes games. Partner site Absolute Poker had just admitted that the same form of cheating had taken place on their site when a whole load of statistical analysis was put forward providing pretty compelling evidence that the problem was not just limited to one site.

For the following four months Ultimatebet remained remarkably tight lipped about the allegations other than to confirm that they were looking into the matter, but they have now released a statement admitting that it is true – many high stakes players were cheated out of vast sums of money on their site. No exact figure has been given yet as to how much money was won in this way, but considering that the cheating is now confirmed to have taken place from March 2006 to December 2007 the amount is surely in the order of millions.

The statement is very similar to the one previously released by Absolute Poker in that it claims the current Ub workforce is not connected with this scandal, instead laying blame on rogue former employees. If true it doesn’t say much for Ub’s security that ex-employees were still able to access accounts with powerful capabilities to see hole cards. However, many are sceptical that this is in fact nothing but a lie as part of a cover up, especially given that the names of several fraudulent accounts involved in this were changed by somebody within Ultimatebet very recently. Whatever the truth is though, Ultimatebet will continue to operate and people will continue to play there as they did on Absolute.

JohnnyBax

It would appear that the timing of this admission is no coincidence – as part of damager limitation Ub presumably wanted to be able to get this out in the open and not have it hanging over themselves and sponsored players such as Phil Hellmuth with the World Series about to start. People will now have a couple of days to dwell on it before everybody’s attention turns to the Rio where the cards will be in the air for the first bracelet event on 30th May. The timing of the announcement of Ub’s latest sponsored player also seems to have been well orchestrated to tie in with this news as they attempt to regain the trust of the online community. There’s not much they possibly can do in the eyes of many, but getting one of the legends of the online game on your side in the form of Cliff Josephy (aka JohnnyBax) is not a bad effort. Bax has been cleaning up on multiple sites for years now and has racked up over a million dollars in tournament wins on Pokerstars alone. It seems a little more money in the form of sponsorship would not go amiss though in exchange for the respect of many of his fans and he has this to say on the matter: “I have always enjoyed playing at UltimateBet. The interface and the structure are second to none. It is my belief that management is committed to doing the right things on a going forward basis. Thus, I have decided to support them. I will do all I can to ensure the players really like the improved UB.”

Before the WSOP starts up though there was one last big tournament in the form of the first World Poker Tour event of the new season in Barcelona, although it was not a particularly high profile affair. The event was not televised and many of America’s top players did not bother to make the trip to Spain meaning a field of just 253 runners even though the buy in was dropped to €5,000 this year from € 7,500. Around twice as many players sat down for the most recent EPT event in the same city, and if the WPT are to make any further cuts to their itinerary next year this one could be in jeopardy.

This tournament represented a rare opportunity for young Annette Obrestad to play in a WPT event and she made a good start on day one, as did Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani who was fortunate enough to have two people move all in on him pre flop whilst holding aces. Neither was able to progress beyond day two though, despite Annette producing one of her customary miracles when calling an all in from pocket kings with six high which went on to hit a gutshot for the straight.

There were in fact few recognisable names left as the latter stages of the tournament approached and the final table consisted of six players few will have heard of (not necessarily a bad thing – a Portsmouth v Cardiff cup final is welcome every once in a while for a change.) Stefan Mattsson began as chip leader and still held that lead when he went heads up against Casper Hansen of Denmark. After initially gaining further ground to hold a big lead, Mattsson saw his stack gradually worn down and eventually was overtaken by Hansen. Soon after they both got all their chips in the middle pre flop and Mattsson’s looked a decent bet to undo all the recent damage against Hansen’s . It’s a cruel game however and a two on the flop was enough for Hansen to complete the comeback and take the title. He leaves Barcelona €425,000 better off and with a seat to the grand final at Bellagio next April.

David Singer

Also celebrating a big win is David Singer who battled his way through six matches to win Full Tilt’s $25,000 entry heads up championship. Many of the Full Tilt pros were out in force for this one but many fancied players fell at the first hurdle such as Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Erick Lindgren, Gus Hansen, Chris Ferguson and Huck Seed. Even without these players there was plenty of quality left in the tournament and Singer’s opponent in the final had to deal with a tough draw to get there. Whitelime, thought to be Emil Patel, defeated Ivey, fellow Cardrunners instructor Taylor Caby, “Nordberg” Peter Feldman and “Ansky451” Dan Stern but just came up short against Singer who picked up $560,000 for the win.

The Cardrunners site Patel provides content for has some news of its own this week as it is set to be heavily represented at the WSOP this year. A last minute addition to the sponsors list, Cardrunners has been named as the official sponsor of the satellite room (formerly the media rooms and food hall) this year. Cardrunners videos will also be running non-stop on plasma screens in the hallway with a stand offering introductory offers to join the site.

By next week there will be plenty of news from the Rio with several bracelets on offer in the first few days, including the $10,000 world championship pot limit Omaha event.

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