The Ultimate Bet Scandal

Online poker was hit with another black eye this week. Just a short time after it’s sister site, Absolute Poker was rocked by a “super user” scandal, Ultimate Bet is now involved in a cheating scandal all its own. Initial reports had surfaced in January about Ultimate Bet being a cheaters den, however the company quickly denied those rumors. With an incomplete investigation thus far, it is unknown if this is another super user incident, which would have huge consequences and repercussions for the company. In the Ultimate Bet incident, a still unidentified company "consultant" was found to have used a loophole in the card rooms software created by an upgrade which enabled him to view other players hidden hole cards. The result was a big loss in player trust, and a $500,000 fine from the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. It was reported that on January 12th, Ultimate Bet was made aware of the account under the screen name “nionio” which had been winning at an outrageous rate at the cash game tables which had led to a number of other Ultimate Bet players accusing him of cheating at the tables. Ultimate Bet has a Gambling Compliance division, who says it called in a third party expert to review the “nionio” hand histories. An Ultimate Bet representative posted this on the twoplustwo forums.

“On January 12, 2008, UltimateBet says it “was alerted to allegations that a player with the online handle “NioNio” exhibited abnormally high winning statistics and was accused of having an unfair advantage during play. These allegations were made both directly to UltimateBet by concerned players and the KGC (Kahnawake Gaming Commission), and indirectly through several poker forums. The allegations also included reports of suspicious activity concerning the deletion of the NioNio account and other accounts that may have been related to this scheme.

We immediately launched an extensive inquiry involving an independent third-party expert to review hundreds of thousands of hand histories, all of which were promptly locked down and made available to this expert. The initial findings of our third-party expert confirm that the NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal, and we have expanded the investigation to look into whether an unfair advantage existed, how such a scheme might have been perpetrated, and whether additional accounts beyond those of NioNio were involved “UltimateBet is in regular communications and contact with its regulatory authority, The Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), and will continue to cooperate fully with that body. “UltimateBet is determined to complete a full and thorough investigation. We pride ourselves on providing a safe, secure playing environment for our customers. The investigation has proven to be extremely complex and, therefore, has been more extensive and taken much longer than initially expected. We continue to aggressively pursue the matter and will communicate the findings of our full investigation to our regulatory authority and to our customer base as soon as practicable.” Ultimate Bet is clearly quickly going to attempt to clear its name in this issue, but how? The future success of the company may hinge on the outcome of this.

So what is to make of this statement from Ultimate Bet? There is a lot of buzz on the internet forums about this. Most of the poker players are saying that this is far to little to late, and the UB had to have known about this for months. This is a valid point, this was first reported in January, why not launch a full investigation then? By having a representative post through the moderators at twoplustwo really shows that UB does not want players having an easy way to enquire about this.

This far, this is very much mimicking the Absolute Poker scandal. The letter basically states that they spent three months on an investigation to say, yes he had abnormal winning stats, No we do not know exactly why. It also seems as though they may be buying time, as to be able to attempt to possibly cover up something shady going on. Poker players are calling UB out on the fact that they let this sort of thing happen. In researching for this article, if you Google poker cheating, the only US room that supports the cheating bots etc, is in fact UB. This does not make UB’s security look top notch. One of the biggest things that drew attention to his “NioNio” account was that it had won a huge amount in a short amount of time. Hasn’t anyone seen the movie “Office Space”? These guys attempt to run a scam where they are taking a minute amount of money from the company every day, which would eventually add up to a fortune. What is someone was to attempt that? Would you know someone was a super user if they were winning 9 or 10 hands out of every hundred they could? If they made seemingly good folds not losing money and winning smaller amounts over a long period of time, playing low to middle stakes, how would you know? Are they a successful online player or are they a super user? Would you play on a site where you have to worry about this happening? These are valid questions that the online poker community is asking. UB will eventually release something saying that they either have solved the case, which is the best case scenario, or they will say that there are too many discrepancies to have a final result, however the site is secure and players will be encouraged to play. The flip side of this could bring a positive light to Ultimate Bet. If they truly can identify how this happened, they can provide valuable insight into the world of cheating in online poker. It is in UB’s best interest to give this a one hundred percent effort to come to a tangible resolve. One can’t imagine it being to hard as you have full access to your own network to find out who is doing this. If they can take appropriate measures to reprimand the players in violation, the online poker community may start to regain trust for the site. How this plays out may determine the future for Ultimate Bet.

Easypokerbonuses.com 2008-03-12