After a ton of deliberation and chatting with friends, one being Shane Schleger, and reading through some of the pages of this thread, I feel like it’s time to clear the air on the Jon Aguiar incident as best I can, as well as address some UB-related comments. I have been told repeatedly that this is a complete mistake by most, but I am going to try and give 2+2 more credit than some others would, and depend on you all to give me a fair shake and interpret objectively...

AGUIAR
First of all, I take full responsibility that my initial DM was overly aggressive and out of line. For that I apologize.


When I signed on with UB almost two years ago, I saw it as an opportunity to help turn a company around. I've been called everything from naive to a douche for thinking I could help change the company and the perception there, but I still feel like I have done my best, and am still making positive steps with UB. I have put a ton of work into those efforts. And because I have, I take the continued knocks against UB personally. Sometimes I act or say things in reaction that I wish I could take back. And given the way Aguiar was bashing UB with the Prahlad/Ike incident, even though it had nothing to do with UB, I reacted quickly and made a bad decision. No escaping that.


Now, did I view that DM to Jon as private? Absolutely. Do I think taking a private message and asking for a public apology is strange? That's irrelevant. I shouldn’t have sent it, plain and simple. Jon made his decisions after that, and over 700+ posts later, here we are.


All I’ll add to this is that in no way, shape, or form was that message an attempt to blackmail Jon or threaten him, and I don't believe he thought that legitimately for one second. I was not telling him I was literally going to expose skeletons in his closet, albeit my choice of words was obviously dreadful in that regard. I just wanted him to chill out on UB and realize that the company had nothing to do with the current disagreement between Prahlad/Ike. I just chose a bad way of expressing that. Given that I tweeted to “be a man” about it I’m sure didn’t help things either. I’m pretty sure most people who know me know I’m not the street fighting type, and I wasn’t asking Jon to come meet me there. I was understandably upset that he posted a private message in a public forum, and I wanted him to talk to me privately about it. I also feel that he has actively publicly misrepresented the situation when he knew better after that, but that's neither here nor there. My initial written post was a complete breakdown of all the ways that he had done so, but that just continues to fuel this fire and doesn't get us anywhere productive at all, so I scrapped it.

In summary, I made a mistake and I apologize for that mistake. If Jon feels that he owes anyone an apology, I'll leave that up to him to decide.


UB
With Travis Makar going on Donkdown (which, despite my personal feelings about them, I think they did a good job handling) and Haley’s most recent blog on Greg Pierson, there’s been a lot of new chatter on UB. Just wanted to state/reiterate a few things on 2+2:

1. I’ve never said that the current management group didn’t make some dire mistakes in their handling of the cheating scandal in the early stages, before I came on board. They did, and they know it. I simply do not believe that they a) actively helped the individuals who cheated to do so or get away with it, b) have doctored hand histories themselves to cover things up, or c) have attempted to hide facts to pay less money out in refunds.


The company was tailspinning after the scandal, and we’ve had to dig ourselves out of a huge hole. Mistakes were made early on. But we’ve been doing our best to win back support of the 2+2‘ers and others who, rightfully, abandoned the company back in ’07.


On that note, we have no doubt that there is way more information about the scandal that’s out there. And we want that information to come out. We want Haley to keep digging. We want Travis Makar to release everything he has. We will do nothing to stand in the way of this information from coming out. From my perspective, I don’t think the company will ever be able to 100% totally move forward until it does. And I, as well as management, personally hope it does.


2. UB management has never attempted to control what I say or when I say it. In fact, just the opposite. It’s one of the things I respect most about them. They have allowed me to make my own decisions. Maybe it’s not the best PR for them all the time, but I can make my own mistakes.


3. Regardless of your opinion of UB right now, please keep in mind that "making mistakes" (be it with the initial response to the scandal or even the ridiculous security lapse that happened last year) is far different then "helping cheaters cheat.” None of our pros were ever connected to the scandal. None of our management was part of the scandal. But we keep taking all the bullets, despite many people who were likely connected to either being a super-user, which is just disgusting and something that will forever be a black eye for us, or cover-up rarely get flamed to the level we do. It's your right to do it. I understand why you do it, but we're not the cheaters. We were not involved in the scandal in any way. Nor was our current management.


4. And yes, I believe that the current ownership is different from the former ownership. I have also heard constant claims that this is not so. Again, any proof of these claims would be great to see if it exists. I don't believe that it does. Of course, I am putting a great deal of faith in the current owners/management with making these claims, but that's what most of us do with our employers, and I am doing the same. Obviously if this were ever to be proven to be not true, I would feel duped.


Thanks for taking the time to read through this. 2+2 was instrumental in bringing the AP and UB super-user scandals to light and have helped continue to bring up new information over the past few years, and we are all indebted because of that. I do believe that UB should have a presence on this forum. On that note, I will try to answer questions or concerns that continue to pop up on UB when I am alerted to them. I can't promise I will become an active member of this community, but when issues arise that are reasonable, I will try and answer them.

Cheers,
J

I just want to say thanks to Joe for doing this.

He had plenty of natural reluctance to come on this forum, but I implored him to do it on the basis that I believe this is a respectful and productive online community.

I think his being willing to come on here and talk to us is a major first step in repairing relations between Joe, UB and the poker community, and as I've said I think everyone benefits from that.

Please don't prove me wrong, NVG.

no question that working with UB has harmed my personal rep, brand, etc. the bottom line is that i don't believe most of what is currently said about them and no one has ever been able to show me anything that proves it.

i came on board to try and help the company and rehabilitate it back to health. if i leave now it would just be because i was run off without any proof. you could fault my decision for getting involved initially, but i think leaving now just because of of the heat i deal with would be far worse.

i encourage everyone to read Haley's latest "just conjecturin'" post. it's not like i can personally go and examine the servers and understand if hands are missing or not, but it's very reasonable to believe the previous regime deleted some in order to protect certain individuals that may (or may not) have been part of the scandal.

http://haleyspokerblog.blogspot.com/

you seem to have more facts than i do. i wish i was as sure about how everything went down as you seem to be. i actually wish that i knew much more than i do, altho i am proud of the pieces we have been able to put together, much of it with the help of member of 2+2 obv.

can't say it's perfect by any stretch, but i do think we know much more now than we used to.

Well what can you do? What things have you done?

I'm surprised you believe the company agrees with your stance about the whole truth coming out being good for them long term when they have repeatedly shown otherwise.

I notice you still refuse to address the inclusion of my girlfriend in this all, it's a huge point to just ignore in such a lengthy thought out response.

jon, i am perfectly happy to let everyone know why i brought up your gf. that's your call. you know exactly why i mentioned her.

that's your business.

also wanted to add that by posting our private message publicly that you have brought her into this publicly, not i. i feel very badly for any stress that it may have caused her. i would probably think if you want to keep pushing it.

LOL, awesome that he's threatening to reveal stuff about Jon's girlfriend in the apology thread.

Well um, Jon kind of asked him to in a roundabout way?

Come on Todd, you're one of the respected posters on here, don't start trolling. Ask serious questions or gtfo imo.

I wouldn't count on them....ever.
http://www.pokerroad.com/forums/open...bets-dept.html

This of course isn't on Joe but I'm sure the blame will once again fall on him as the public figure head.

maybe you can start to think about why some people have certain thought about 2+2 with a comment like this.

i do not. i wish i had more to release. i really do. we uncovered many names in the wickedchops piece we did, http://wickedchopspoker.com/the-ulti...candal-part-i/

i think part of the problem is that people want the names to be sexier perhaps? Annie, Phil, etc, but we never found anything to support that. we released everything that we did find.

def agree. whole point of this is to open up communication about ub, not continue to hem over this tweetwar, imo.

I asked a ton of serious questions about UB on the PokerRoad forum a very long time ago. They were never answered. Can we start with those?


Edit: And my read on what Joe wrote about Jon's girlfriend in this thread is spot on.

i'm always happy to attempt to answer anything reasonable, todd. with your particulars though, i doubt i will know those answers. a better person to have answer them would be paul.

Well you could at least TRY to start with those instead of starting with a post with "LOL."

Joe is on foreign terrain here, a new member to the forum, we can afford a modicum of respect in order to hopefully create a baseline for communication.

Not sure why you didn't just post your question instead of posting a diss...this isn't PokerRoad forums, this is 2p2, and a fresh start for a thread on the issue, so you should post those questions anyway.

i don't know anything about any of this that you are talking about, just fyi. i am not a fan of paying people to post, etc on sites, altho i know that many sites, in and out of poker, do it. it's not my particular taste tho.

Joe in a recent interview you did with Pokerstatic you said "They (current UB) panicked, they tried to cover it up.........We should not have covered it up."

Paul Leggett said this in an interview with Pocketfives on 7-31-08

So what exactly did UB do to try to cover it up? Some details would be nice.

In the same Leggett interview, he said

Any chance any of this evidence will come forward? Or is the company only willing to let evidence come up from a different channel, like Makar or people sending stuff to Haley?

Leggett gave an interview produced by Tokwiro on the AP Scandal.

From screenshots Haley was sent, it appears money did leave the site.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZtNem8584n...0/scottom6.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZtNem8584n.../graycat-2.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ZtNem8584n.../graycat-4.jpg

How can these cashouts be explained? Also the one person doing he cheating also doesn't seem to make sense.

From Haley's blog Just Conjecturin', Volume 11: Meanwhile, Over at Absolute Poker, It Seems Scott Tom Really Did It or the thread on 2+2 about Scott Tom AP/UB -- PotRipper Backstory Fully Exposed and other stories

It seems Scott Tom name was "dragged into this" b/c he was guilty. Why is Paul/Cereus protecting the AP cheaters?

ElevenGrover has blogged a lot about the matter as well. His Loss Reports blogs raise some good questions.

Paul Leggett said this about the refund analysis by Uri Kozai, yet at the time neither mentioned missing HH's

Here is a post I made on PokerRoad that contains a link to Uri explaining his methodology. Seems it was pretty thorough to me.

I could go on and on pointing out the flaws in Leggett's interviews and blogs, but these are some main things I had questions on. Esp. Scott Tom, since you yourself Joe thought he was guilty, but it wasn't an official company response.

I asked for Paul to answer them when I posted them in 2009.

I don't think anyone with a brain should / would think that the former owners of UB (russ hamilton, greg pierson, matloubi etc) are the current owners of the new UB+AP.

You remember the AP cheating scandal right, the T high call down, and the blatant cheating that went on at that site for a number of years - the issue isn't that the old UB now owns the new AP+UB, the issue is that the old AP, you know the ones that funded their entire operation on the premise that cheating their customers was a good way to generate revenue - these are the guys that now own the new UP+AP.

I think its convenient that you keep on stating that you don't think that the old UB owners are still involved or own AP+UB, but answer this if you would -

Do you think the Montana guys, the old original owners of AP - do you think they have any ownership or involvement in the new UB/AP company.

I have never heard you or anyone involved with the company state whether or not this was the case - and if this was the case would you still feel "duped"?

i wish that i could possibly know everything that happens at ub, but that just isn't possible. i am a sponsored pro who has attempted to get as involved in the business as i can. i don't think it's fair to think i could know every detail about how the company is run.

Super weak. If you're going to fob off questions like that with the old "well I don't like it myself", combined with the playground "everyone else does it" then it's hardly worth bothering with this. We're not talking about what you're a fan of or what everyone else does, you're here to justify the actions of your employer. Can you do it or not ?

i have no doubt that some of the original owners are still around, bob. i believe that anyone who was involved or implicated in the cheating scandal at AP are not still. at least that's what my information and snooping around has turned up. as always, if anyone has any concrete information that proves they are there, i would def listen.

i tell you what. i will def write an email to paul and let him know that i don't think this is the way to go if it is going on.