Despite being in the middle of a firestorm of controversy surrounding her ongoing battle with Poker News, Tiffany Michelle found time to sign with Ultimate Bet in a move that was officially announced on Tuesday. Read more »
Each week, several of the largest online poker rooms offer gigantic prize pools as part of their Sunday tournament offering. With the news this week that it would bump up the prize pools of the Sunday Million and Warm-Up starting next week, PokerStars saw a nice bump in traffic for its five major tournaments that kicked off Sunday afternoon. Combined, they offered more than $2 million in guaranteed payouts and more than 15,000 total entrants. In this week's online tournament roundup, we'll focus on the online poker action from the largest room in the world, PokerStars. Read more »
Some people can't get enough action in Sunday tournaments online. You'll find many of the same names playing in several of the major tournaments on the weekends for that exact reason. One online poker room recently set the bar for guaranteed tournaments just a little bit higher. Over the weekend, it was revealed that the two largest tournaments offered on PokerStars every week would see their guarantees increase dramatically starting on August 3rd. The Sunday Million, which currently sports a $1 million guarantee, will now offer at least a $1.5 million prize pool. The Sunday Warm-Up, which currently boasts a $500,000 prize pool, will now have a $750,000 guarantee. In both cases, the largest online poker site in the world just increased its two largest guarantees by 50%. Read more »
Ultimate Bet has come into the forefront of the media for the past few days since the Kahnawake Gaming Commission announced that its findings on the cheating scandal at the online poker room would be announced shortly. Read more »
This week, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission released a statement concerning the improper conduct on the tables of two of its permit holders, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. Read more »
Major news hit the wires in the online poker world on Thursday, as the management of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker announced the launch of CEREUS, a poker platform that will combine the users and features from both sites. Read more »
It was only a matter of time before the Poker Players Alliance, the main lobbying group for the online poker industry in the United States, weighed in on the cheating scandal that has rocked Ultimate Bet, one of the world's largest online poker rooms. After all, the cheating occurred in an online environment that was not regulated by any U.S. entity, which is exactly what the PPA has been seeking ever since the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was enacted into law in 2006. With regulation and oversight, in theory, future situations like the ones that occurred at Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker could be avoided altogether. Read more »
Tiffany Michelle's battle against PokerNews rages on. The controversy surrounds the poker player signing a sponsorship agreement with UltimateBet after Jeffrey Lisandro and PokerNews owner Tony G bought her into the $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event. In the latest development, Tony G responded in his blog. He summed up his portrayal of the arrangement he had with his former reporter: "She is considered to be an official representative of PokerNews, and in all matters of honor and integrity, how can she discard her responsibility to PokerNews and step into a contract with someone else as their official representative?" To find out the answer, PokerNewsDaily spoke directly with Tiffany Michelle to learn her side of the story. Read more »
Following on the radio interview she gave last week, Tiffany Michelle has issued a thorough rebuttal of Poker News' accusations against her, hoping to clear her name and to put to rest all talk of betrayal and lack of ethics on her part. Read more »
The Russ Hamilton saga has been sweeping the online poker world in the last week. Ever since January, UltimateBet has come under fire for the actions of one of its founding fathers, leading many to wonder whether he is the man who is directly responsible for cheating in the top-level games that UB offers. Recently, on a major poker radio show, Barry Greenstein, a PokerStars pro and the owner of three World Series of Poker bracelets, defended Hamilton after paying the former UB owner a visit in Las Vegas. Greenstein met with Hamilton along with his son, Joe Sebok, who is also a heralded poker pro. Read more »
Looking for something to do this weekend? Are you in need of some entertainment? How about winning a trip to Aruba? On Saturday, Ultimate Bet is offering a tournament that gives away 50 prize packages to its annual Aruba Poker Classic, which starts on September 27th from the Radisson Aruba Resort and Casino. All you'll need to pack is your sunscreen. Get ready for the white sandy beaches of this island paradise. It's hard to believe that this is the seventh year that the Aruba Poker Classic has been played. Previously a stop on the World Poker Tour circuit, it's one of the top tournaments offered today that's held outside of the United States. Read more »
As young poker pro Tiffany Michelle made it deep into the WSOP Main Event and became the last woman standing at spot 17, some noticed a change in her sponsorship patches: while she started out wearing Poker News gear, she ended her Main Event run in Ultimate Bet logos. Poker News issued a strongly worded statement regarding what they see as a breach of trust, while Michelle states she never had an exclusivity deal. Here are both sides of the story. Read more »
To say that the last six months have been busy for the customer service department at Ultimate Bet would be quite an understatement. Rocked by a cheating scandal involving the former owners of the company, Ultimate Bet has struggled to maintain its customer's trust as it moves forward. Recent threads on several of the major online poker discussion forums, including TwoPlusTwo and PocketFives.com, have implicated one of UB's former owners, Russ Hamilton, in the cheating scandal. Although the information is currently nothing more than pure speculation, the online poker world is gradually beginning to learn more about just what caused the larceny to occur. Read more »
Ever since the scandal erupted at Ultimate Bet, the site has been quick to take action. On May 29th, the company issued a statement regarding the findings of its investigation, which had been ongoing since UB was made aware of the abnormalities in January of several of its user accounts. In response, UB issued a statement last week outlining other screen names that were involved in the scandal, which rocked UB and caused many to question its security measures. The list of newly-named user accounts follows: Crackcorn55, WhakMe, GrabBag123, gravitation, Bgroup, H_Curtis, Twenty 1, WacoManiac, Broke_In_L_A, ShaqTack, BlueBerry101, HolyMucker, 55WasHere, Xnomas, dannyboy55, Indy05, and SlimPikins2. It's the latest news in the scandal, which is currently still being investigated by UB's parent company, Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG. Read more »
