Ultimate Bet “Confirms” Cheating
Thanks to Shamus for keeping me up-to-date on these things.
http://hardboiledpoker.blogspot.com/2008/03/cheating-scheme-confirmed-at-ultimate.html
Rather than notify users or post anything on its website, Ultimate Bet — following the same, questionable path of its partner, Absolute Poker — has decided to publicize news regarding allegations of cheating on its site by sending messages to various poker people who then pass the stuff along to the poker community at large.
Around 9:00 p.m. (EST) on Friday, Mason Malmuth posted the following over on Two Plus Two:
Hi Everyone:
We just received this from Ultimate Bet and they asked us to post it. So here it is.
Best wishes,
MasonULTIMATEBET INTERIM STATEMENT
Contact: Press@ultimatebet.com
Montreal, Canada (March 6, 2008) – UltimateBet (UB), one of the ten largest online poker cardrooms, today issued the following interim statement with respect to allegations of unfair play on its site.
“On January 12, 2008, UltimateBet 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, and indirectly through several web 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.”
Of course, when Ultimate Bet says they plan to communicate the findings to its customer base, I think we all know better. Only those among their customer base who happen to peruse forums like [Cardschat], poker blogs, and/or a few of the poker news sites are ever going to hear the first word about cheating occurring on the site on which they play.
If you do happen to be one of those few who both play at Ultimate Bet and read the forums and/or Hard-Boiled Poker, tell me this: Does this vague report of a cheating “scheme” make you feel any safer about UB?
I have always been very careful on any - on-line poker site my grandfather was security in the gaming industry in vegas for 32 yrs. The major concern i have is the possibility of the VIRTUAL SHILL inserted by the house could be 1 or more especially in the large buy-in tournies and ring games if they insert say 2 or 3 and they make it to the top 18 then the house retains those funds,, they r after all in the business to make a profit this would insure they cover any OVERLAY on guarnteed tournies therefore i only play the lower end buy-ins it’s a wonderful way to improve my game for live action tournies
Comment by rfdouggie — March 12, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
I have no reason to believe any online poker room has tried to “win” money for the house, so to speak. The house already wins tons of money and will lose more from the potential bad press than they could stand to gain to win even one large tournament.
The AP scandal (and seemingly now UB) is not about the house rigging the cards in favor of anyone.
Comment by F Paulsson — March 12, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
I for one don’t like either site their server won’t hold my connection and I couldn’t play but one maybe two hands before haveing to reboot the game . And I also believe that it was the committees fault for letting this situation get so bad in the first place. Don’t they check or sit in on a table and watch now and then? What is their job? They don’t have a reason for VIRTUAL SHILL because the get a percentage of the prize pool in any tourney. But it don’t mean they don’t do it.
Comment by 0_ARIZONA_0 — March 21, 2008 @ 11:12 am