Ulimate bet / fraudulent?

i have recently heard from someone about Ultimate bet being caught for cheating/fraud in the past....im going to google this in a min but i would like to know what you guys have heard or what you guys know about this...........and If you play there id like to know of your experiences ...do you run into that one guy at a table who makes unheard of rediculous preflop and post flop calls when u have a really big hand with rags and always seems to win...its just a bit unerving and too mutch of a consistant occurance for me to not pik up on somthing amiss...and id like to know what Ub players have to say....I say Investigate them again and thoroughly......

I think, but not sure, that there was a former employee of UltimateBet, who could see the other players cards.

I believe it was UltimateBet, but could be mistaken on this. But, it is a place to start.

Good luck,

mange

If you're googling, look for "potripper".

If you're new to this, the fraud was exposed a year or two ago, partly through the efforts of another forum on poker - one of the US network news programs (60 minutes I think) ran a show on this a few months ago.

UB and AP say they have put more robust security measures in place since then (I'm not personally vouching for this, just stating that fact).

I'm not sure about Ultimatebet cheating, i just don't know.... But i do know that no matter what site you are on...you will always have the players making the most obsene calls and all in's... Thats just the general nature of online poker... I don't even think that most online players even care.. I've seen people go all in with 8 3 off suit and rip apart A's from the flop...

I have played at ultimatebet often in the past, But i'm not a big fan of ultimatebet...The graphics are lame, and the support sucks, i only play on Absolute poker because the grapics are better , but other than that Neither of them are my favorite....

if i had to choose between only 1 site, It would have to be Poker.com, Or any of the other merge gaming networks.

Good luck on the felt

yes there was a particular scandal at ultimatebet that occured last year i believe? correct me if im wrong though.

anyways it was a hand in which some noname was playing against phil hellmuth in high stakes poker. the noname won the showdown but the software at ultimatebet gave the pot to hellmuth. The noname contacted ultimatebet and showed the HH and when they found out what had happened supposedly all players effected were given their money back.

imo it was ultimatebet trying to give phil more money and rip off some newbie. only the newbie was paying attention and caught the scandal =]

personally i dont play real money here at UB.

As far as I know, this was said to be a one time glitch of some sort, I didn't hear that this was fraud (though I didn't follow this closely).

The potripper scandal is different and was definitely fraud; some insider users were able to see their opponents' hole cards during the play of the hand. For further info (I don't know all the details), I suggest googling "potripper".

For the integrity and credibility of a forum about poker, with such a strong emphasis on online play, it's important that we not feed the "online poker is rigged" mentality without a solid basis for concerns expressed. I'm sure UB has easier ways to give money to PH (how about a bonus? companies give them out all the time) without ripping off the clientele - and they already had enough image problems due to the potripper scandal.

i was jk about giving phil money to rip off a newbie now c'mon.

i have no intension of "feeding the online poker is rigged" mentality since

i myself have played online for over 2 years now and will be making another big deposit here next july or august.

sorry you misunderstood

Well I always swore I would never play at Ultimate bet because of the history however the threads on here that I have read are split down the middle with many saying they never play there and probably slightly more saying that they have cleaned up their act and that they are ok now

My youngest son has been nagging for a poker account for a while now but I have been reluctant to open one as he would be playing using the same internet connection as me and I dont want any of the sites I use thinking that I am multi accounting

In a moment of extreme hypocracy I decided to open him an account on ultimate bet

Sorry Patty - sore spot w me - overly easily annoyed, no sense of humor ldo -

its all good sly, i get easily annoyed over certain things too.

Not to publicize other inferior sites...but 2+2 has several HUGE threads concerning the UB situation with accurate information on the whole process (also happened at sister site AbsolutePoker in another matter) and also had its own story at CBS 60 Minutes a little bit ago.

2+2 Posters (and I think PocketFive also) uncovered the whole scam and pieced it all together using brilliant detective teamwork.

Basically, old management insiders were able to read players hole cards by using "superuser" accounts and cheating players of millions of dollars. It happened at larger tables so only big time players were affected.

That is why pokertrackers and datamining is good for online poker, as peoples hands and winrates can be determined and if something statistically fishy is going on it can be rooted out.

Also, this is why it is HIGHLY unlikely any sites RNG is "rigged". It is MUCH easier for these same people to track down a sites statisical hand probability over a million or more random hands--and then determine if the hands dealt deviate too much from the expected norm. Then it would be reported by these same people who had a much harder job of finding individual players who cheated.

Ever site you go on you have the same problems no matter what.
(dont mean cheating tho) people who go all in with crap and you get beat, happened to me on just about all my sites i play.
People who go to river just about no matter what is on the board etc.
All these thing make you think.

The Potripper scandal was at Absolute Poker, but now Ultimate and Absolute have merged, so you can have double the cheating for the price of one! If you do use Google to investigate this, keep in mind that so many people have posted false information (knowingly and unknowingly), you can only get the real story from reputable sources. Anything you read on a poker forum (just like in this thread) probably contains errors of fact.

Having stated that, I will post a bit of what I know from the Potripper scandal, but again, if you want the whole truth, I recommend the 60 minutes or Washington Post stories on the scandal.

Many years ago, when AP was first set up, super-user accounts (capable of seeing ALL cards of EVERY player at the table) were set up to test the reliability of the software. These accounts were only able to be used in play chip games, and were rendered useless (but not erased) once the software had been tested.

Several years later, AP decided to revamp its software. At this time, someone within the company who new about the accounts (or a rogue programmer hired for the revamp) found them and tweaked them to function in real money games. The dormant accounts were re-activated.

Later, someone (probably within the company) found several accounts that had not been used in some time (they did not create new accts, probably to avoid suspicion). One of these accounts was Potripper, but there were others. It seems implausible that this was done by someone outside the company, as the email addresses were changed on all the accts so the "mystery man" could use them to "play" poker. Later investigation showed no connection among the original users whose accounts had been stolen and used to cheat.

Once this thief (or these thieves) had their super-account + the accounts they had swiped form idle users, the cheating began. Someone outside of Costa Rica would log on with one of the 5 stolen accounts, while the super account would sit at their table as an observer. As the game was played, our super-account observer would tell his stolen-account-playing buddy exactly what everyone's hole cards were.

Over several months, some player started to notice that this guy (Potripper) never seemed to lose. Speculation about cheating was posted on several well-known forums where the regulars blasted them and told them to put on their tinfoil hats, much like what happens here at CC whenever anyone even hints about cheating in online poker.

Some players wrote AP about their concerns who promised to investigate. A few weeks later, AP claimed to have carried out an investigation into the tournament and found a little evidence of chip dumping, but absolutely no evidence of big time cheating, much less evidence of a player able to see hole cards. (Later we will see that this is a bald face lie from AP. Either they carried out no investigation at all, and said that they had; or they discovered the cheating and lied about (possibly because the company was involved).

Undaunted, one player decided to investigate further after AP held its largest payout tournament in its history. Potripper won this tourney, and interestingly enough, called our player's all-in bluff (and won) with 10 high!

Fuming in anger, our player requested a hand history of the tournament. It was this request that soon blew the scandal wide open. Somebody within the company either screwed up bigtime, or knew what was going on and wanted to blow the whistle. He sent our player not a hand history, but a spreadsheet with ALL the data from the tournament, including everyone's hole cards for every hand, and even everyone's IP address that they had played from.

Examination of the data proved beyond any doubt that the player indeed could see hole cards (despite AP's denial and "investigation"). One mathmetician even stated that a person was more likely to win 6 state lotteries buying one ticket in each of 6 states, than to have the "good fortune" that Potripper enjoyed (and AP's investigation found only evidence of chip dumping????). You decide for yourself, here is a link to a re-creation of the first part of the tournament. Watch for yourself.....

YouTube - Absolute Poker Superuser "POTRIPPER" Cheating (Part 1 of 4)

Our sleuths noticed that one "observer" had followed Potripper throughout the tournment. Every time Potripper changed tables, our "observer" followed him (the super-acct). But the spreadsheet included the IP addresses of ALL players including observers. A check of the IP address showed that the account was being played from a computer inside AP's headquarters in Costa Rica! (that sound like a rogue programmer to you??)

Confronted with overwhelming evidence that cheating had in fact occurred, AP refunded everyone's money form this tournament. As far as I know, only part of the other money that these scammers had won was ever returned. AP finally accepted responsibility, investigated the scam, supposedly identified the culprit, but to this day still refuses to say who it was. (that sound like a rogue programmer to you??)