Ultimate Bet Scandal Intersects With Regulated Online Poker

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Sunday, May 12th, 2013 | Written by Lucy Brown

While the events of the Ultimate Bet super-user scandal sit a full decade in the rear-view of the online poker industry, the fallout from the cheating debacle refuses to fade into history.

May has already played host to a number of UB-related events, each of which has sent a unique ripple through the online poker community.

The first came right at the month’s front via headlines like this that must have seemed like something from the Onion to long-time industry watchers: “Amaya Hires Former Absolute Poker Frontman as Online Gaming Head.”

Now, to some it could seem as if a former stint at Absolute Poker – partner of Ultimate Bet and owner of its own out-sized scandal – would be a bane, not a boon, to one’s chances of scoring a job in a tightly regulated version of the online poker industry.

The fact that Mr. Leggett (the frontman in question) has not only secured employment but an apparently prominent place at a major operator, is not inspiring confidence in those who hoped regulation would bring a fresh start to the oft-troubled business of poker played online. It also makes you wonder why PokerStars is having such a tough time in New Jersey.

On the heels of the Leggett story came another bombshell: Ultimate Poker, the first company to launch regulated online poker in Nevada, was (through another contractor) employing Iovation software as part of the player identity verification process. Iovation, as watchers of the UB scandal will recall, played a key role in the development of the Ultimate Bet software – including the “god mode” that allowed the super-user scandal to exist in the first place.

After the connection was made public and brought to the attention of Ultimate Poker, the company (eventually) severed the relationship.

But American poker players can’t feel too great about the ghost of UB rearing its ugly head a mere week after the first regulated room went live. And it’s hard not to speculate about what other connections and relationships between regulated, licensed entities in Nevada and less-than-appealing companies from online poker’s rocky past will be uncovered as time goes on.

We saved the best for last. Why people insist on recording incriminating conversations is beyond us, but Russ Hamilton – the man many believe to be at the heart of the UB cheating scandal – apparently found some reason he thought justified doing so. And in a conversation with a number of other important UB officials taped by Hamilton and released this week by a former UB employee, Russ and the gang admit to everything they know and some of what they did – or planned to do.

While poker media poured over the tapes and extracted the juiciest bits, fewer talked about the subtext of the Hamilton recordings and the companion events that preceded their release. What we see is an online poker industry grasping for respectability. But it’s a target the remains out of reach, because tugging at the cuffs of that industry is a monstrous legacy of deception, greed, dishonesty and outright criminal behavior. And until the community and industry reach some sort of final resolution on Ultimate Bet, Absolute Poker (and the myriad scandals scattered around and about), respectability will remain only an aspiration – never a feasible state.