In her "Online Poker Perspective" column in Pokerplayernewspaper.com, Jennifer Newell is now covering the UB cheating scandal. One of the things I like about this poker rag is they don't shy away from the negative stuff in the poker industry.

It's in the July 7th, 2008 issue on page 34. She says there is more to come. I would post a link if I knew how. Perhaps, someone else could.

Online Poker Perspective: An Absolute Mess by Jennifer Newell

part one

part two

part three

part four

part five

i haven't read these yet...just providing links.

http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/...le.php?id=2749

She doesn't add anything to what has been discussed here. She just repeated UB's party line ("We're conducting our own investigation, and all will be revealed at some future date"), and touched on Duke's "heartfelt" explanation of how UB/AP's new ownership had reassured her that they aren't lying, cheating c***suckers like those last guys.

Blah, Blah, Blah.

I never saw a sponsored pro quiting so fast his sponsoring deal like Rizen did with Ultimate Bet.

STAY AWAY.

Annie Duke was on the P5 podcast and talked about the UB scandal.

http://www.pocketfives.com/Podcasts/070308.mp3

The podcast is usually pretty dry (at least not very interesting to me), so I've highlighted the relevant UB-scandal topics with times and cliff notes:

7:40-13:55

(especially 11:20-13:55)

Goes into some new details about who was NioNio (still no names, but it sounds like it was someone who was bought out pre-public listing working for the company which held the gaming license).

She tries to confuse us when asked about who the ownership of UB is, and if they are the same as the previous owners by repeatedly referring to the new management team at UB. Management != Ownership.

24:10-29:45

When discussing why it took the online community to find this problem, she says they reached out to some key people in the online community (I assume she's alluding to Rizen and Bax), who she claims will be 'gatekeepers for the online community so this is going correctly.' Not sure if this interview was done before or after Rizen bailed on UB.

Listen to Scott Huff and Hillarabos discuss the UB mess at Big Poker Sundays at Pokerroad.com. Bob gives some good insight to UB and everyone should be trying to get a hold of Hellmuth and have him make a REAL comment.

These players only care about the Money UB gives them in Sposorship deals.

If you are wearing a patch of an online poker company and are in the main event and get put up on the featured table..10 to 20k extra in your pocket just for the patch.

How much money do you think Annie and Phil get each year to be the Face of UB...I am guessing anywhere from 400k-500k a year..

They will never be told by the owners anyway what really hapeened. In the Absolute scandal, the ownwers strung Mark Seif along and made him look stupid. They since have apologized to him and have given him guarantees of no more deciet.

here's the pertinent info from the Pocket Five's podcast on 07/03/2008:

pocket fiver three_banger:
Annie, why would you lend your name to UB so quickly after they were exposed for cheating their customers? even if you were confident it won't happen again, how can the average player know this with any certainty when the company initially reacted so poorly to the scandal?

Annie:
so let me just address the UB issue, to be fair since that is the site that i represent...

<my snip>

see i am very curious as to why that people think that the brand acted badly to the superuser scandal, because what i've seen is that somebody said, "hey, this account is kinda out of range," and then UB said, "well let's look at it." then they took about a week and a half they went, "oop, really bad guy. let us go investigate it." and then they investigated it and they put out a couple of interim statements, and then they refunded everybody. they never denied it.

when the management that screwed the AP issue up was in place i was looking to leave the brand, i was actively doing that, i was talking to other brands. very quickly after that sort of got cleaned up the management changed. i was then told give this management a chance. i was like, "i don't know," i was still looking to leave the brand. some people that i really trust were telling me to give these guys a chance. right? the bubblings of the nionio thing start happening in January, at which the point the brand said there is an issue. this is now a different management in place, right? so the new management handled that particular issue much differently than the old management handled the AP issue.

and i sit here and i go, "wow - well, look at how many accounts were involved." so first of all they have to catch all the accounts. that's going to take a little while. but then after they catch all the accounts, they have to do a tremendous amount of data mining going back to March of '06. to discover basically every transaction that was involved with that many accounts. that doesn't take a week. so i feel like that the people who are very negative about issue have sort of put the brand in a catch-22. had the brand actually started refunding within, you know a week or two or whatever, there would have been huge mistakes with the refund because they wouldn't have caught everybody and caught all the...because you know, it was a big data mine.


pocket fiver mu_poker_player:
how do we know that UB ownership wasn't directly behind the scandal and that they just used some anonymous corrupt employee as a scapegoat? how do we know that UB really changed ownership and management.

Annie:
let me answer the second thing first: it's a matter of public record that that company changed ownership. because the company was held as a public company. and then obviously when UIGEA happened it could no longer be held as a public company and listed on the London Stock exchange if it was US-facing. so it had to change ownership and obviously it was sold privately. so that's just a matter of record that it did actually change ownership.

you can also check in terms of Paul Legget, as to what his employment conditions were. he was with another publicly traded gaming company until August of '06. in August of '06 which obviously is right when that AP thing broke, he was brought in as a management consultant to start restructuring actually the IDS portion of the company, which is the customer service side, um, and data service side.

so that was just as that happened, right? so then he said, "oh my god, what's happening? i'm leaving the brand!" at which point the owners of the brand said, "no, we want you now to be the person who manages the brand because we know that you're honest, cause you weren't with the brand beforehand and, you know, you're freaking out about this and we want actually someone who is going to come in and clean up." so people can actually check Paul Legget's employment records as well.

<obvious P5 snip>

actually they didn't use an anonymous, corrupt employee as a scapegoat in the case of the UB scandal. essentially what happened, and these are answers that were actually given to an investigative reporter.

<obvious P5 snip>

when Ultimate Bet was first formed, there was a software company and there was a company that held the gaming license. OK, so this was really back in the day, right? somebody associated with the company that held the gaming license basically developed a piece of software, that if it were used, would allow you to see the whole cards of other players. so again, it wasn't a privilege account. right, so you could create any account, like any account could, as long as you had the piece of software, you could do this with any account, right, so it wasn't actually a super user, that's what i was saying before.

<obvious P5 snip>
so in other words, there is a gaming company that's being held and then there's the people basically running the brand, right? so somebody associated with the gaming company created this piece of software, which they did not exploit.

now in March of '06 there was, the company was going public, and it was going to be listed on the London Stock Exchange. so then what happened was that the company that held the gaming company now got bought out and disappeared, OK, because this all became one company that was then listed on the London Stock Exchange. so now the people who are benefiting from owning that company were done, they were bought out. at which point, this piece of software started to be exploited.

after listening to this several times, i am sick of hearing her say "basically" and label everything as "obvious".

her replies are pretty thin. the ability for outside entities to investigate the ownership chain or Legget's employment deals are not "obvious".

I find it interesting that Jack Bates chimed in right away when his name was mentioned. Has he been watching on the sidelines for a while? What do you think of everything, Jack?

She is lying. The cheating started before the UIEGA was passed and the company "sold". The company was "sold" back to the original owners anyway (Blast Off Media).

Does anyone else want to try defending this company because every single one that has stepped forwarded has been refuted and shot down in flames. Nice try Annie.

Next.

Annie please stop pretending that everything is fine at UB - I'm sure you can get good sponsorship deals elsewhere.

ahahaahaha WHAT!?!?!?

Annie is trying to fool the ultimate donks.

Does anybody go into the UB client and post links to this thread on tables where people are playing??? Might be a good way to spread the word because it doesn't make sense why anybody would play on this site after knowing all this information.

LOL I tried, but you have to deposit some money to be able to chat, and I ain't gonna do that. But if someone wants to trade $5 on stars for $5 on UB I'll do it until they ban me....

I _really_ wish I'd stop finding my name being linked to this fiasco. I seriously have nothing to do with what management at UB has allowed to occur. I am copying this from two other threads that I've posted to on this topic:

Hi. My name is Jack Bates. Yes, I am a real person, and I've gotta say that I'm a bit irritated that I have to decloak for this crock of hooey. But, when people start using your name when discussing cheating people out of money...

Because of the work I've done in the industry, and to avoid even the mere appearance of impropriety, I've never posted here before. I also tend to enjoy my privacy. There are many people who are reading this thread that can vouch for my character. I don't have to. I also believe that my resume speaks for itself (someone posted a link to it).

But just in case: let me emphatically state that I have never, in any way, been involved in cheating at poker. Ever. That type of sociopathic behavior requires greed as a core prerequisite. I think you can trust me when I say that I've seen greed up close. I don't like what it does to people. Think for yourself: If I had played any stupid games, at the scale that I've been involved, don't you think I'd be retired? I personally wrote a bunch of the software that handles the money and authentication. It would not have been a major challenge...

So, please: carefully mind what you say and do not mix my reputation with anyone else.

In my experience, there are some very good people involved in the online poker business. I remain friends with quite a number of them. These people understand that reputation is their largest asset, and they guard their reputations by having the discipline and policies in place to avoid stupid screwups. Screwups like the one being discussed here.

Unfortunately, there are also some marginal types. I will not discuss details, but these people definitely do exist. Again, think for yourself: perhaps there are good reasons when a talented engineer leaves one company and joins another. There usually are. It happens all the time. I think you'd be foolish to paint the management of the poker sites I've worked for with the same brush.

I really don't have any more to say. Please do not contact me unless you have an engineering problem you need solve, or you want to join a little micro-stakes home game in the Albuquerque area. I also wouldn't mind getting a double-deck cancellation hearts game going. Some of you people can handle that game.

Play hard. Earn your pots. CHEERS

lol i think jackbates will have at 1000 poasts by the end of this scandal

I think i smell a rat in here.

Hi Jack,

Thanks for de-cloaking.

Your response is disturbing for a couple reasons. First, this:

These are the same specious arguments used BEFORE this scandal broke to "prove" that no site would ever have super-user to screw their customers. I'm sorry, but this is just meaningless. In fact, it doesn't even make sense (you being retired after including a hack in the security software - its done all the time and I don't know anyone who's "retired" off it).

Also:

You didn't cheat at poker. OK. This doesn't address the allegations in the least, that you had something to do with the software that enabled a super-user. It is suspicious that you use such deceptive wording.

Instead of dodging the question, some sort of real assurance you were not involved would be better.

Point blank, did you have any knowledge of the ability for someone inside UB to see a players hole cards during a game?

Again, thanks for coming and addressing these issues. It means a lot to the poker community.

---Kurt

I was suspicious of a session I played in 2005 so I tried to obtain the HHs from support:

> We have tried to download the hand histories you requested, but
> unfortunately, since this information was saved in our database a long
> time ago is no longer available.
>
> Please note that our system performs scheduled maintenances to improve our
> database and every time this happens all the information with more than
> two years is deleted and replaced with game transactions only.
>
> Attached to this email, you will find the transaction history for your
> account in excel format. We really appreciate your patience and
> understanding.
>
> Do not hesitate to contact us if you require further assistance or
> additional information.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Fabio
> UltimateBet ~ Customer Support
> 'The Ultimate Poker Experience'
> Support@UltimateBet.Com

The transaction history also went back only 2 years.

lol I guess UB couldn't afford an ipod to store HHs on either. Now, they've said that the superusers go all the way back to Jan 2005, but that might just be that they don't have records that go back that far.

can we close this thread and have the UB/Annie thread be the main one? it isn't productive to have info in both and try to follow both threads.

Gotta ask... did it include hole cards and ip addresses?