The Latest: Sebok and More on UltimateBet UB Poker Cheating Scandal!

Source: Poker News

When it comes to developments in the UltimateBet/AP superuser scandal, there are three major instigators: DonkDown Radio, Haley Hintze, and Joe Sebok. Over the past week, the poker world had the opportunity to hear from all three, and each fueled the flames to the UltimateBet scandal. What were the new developments? They involve new cheating allegations, TwoPlusTwo and Twitter drama, and allegations connecting former UltimateBet CEO Greg Pierson to the superuser scandal.

Password Cheating Allegations

On Wed., March 16, 2011, DonkDown Radio revisited the idea, first presented by Travis Makar, that UltimateBet employees had engaged in cheating above and beyond the superuser scandal. DonkDown alleged that employees identified players with high balances on the site, gained access to their accounts by changing their passwords, played under those accounts, and “transferred or dumped the money back to their own account” if they won. On the other hand, if they lost, they hoped the player wouldn’t notice. Furthermore, it was alleged that players were sent a “security e-mail” that claimed “the system automatically changed their password for security reasons.”

DonkDown went on to post an email it had obtained from a player that seemed to corroborate Makar’s allegations that the cheating continued to occur even after the management change (note the date):

From: "UB"
To:
Subject: Your password was reset
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 17:15:30 -0500

Dear XXXXXX,

As a security measure, your password has been securely and randomly reset by the system. Your temporary password is ********. Please log into your account using this temporary password. We strongly recommend changing your password to a more personalized and easier to remember password as soon as you log in. To modify your password, simply select "Update Profile" from the "My Account" menu and then click on the "Change Password" link. If there is anything else we can help you with, please do not hesitate to contact us via email at security@ub.com. We are always here to assist you.

We look forward to seeing you at the tables again soon!

Sincerely,

The UB Team
security@ub.com

While the above e-mail is not proof by itself, the recipient explained that his attempts to obtain more information from UB have been ignored. DonkDown Radio co-host Todd Witteles elaborated in their forum by providing examples on how a password change could benefit cheaters and pointed out that neither PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker “randomly” force password resets. He went on to say, “I think Travis has to be onto something here, even if his details aren't 100% correct.” One thing is for sure, the emails helped fuel the fire when it came to Makar’s allegations.

Sebok Addresses TwoPlusTwo

Encouraged by his friend Shane Schleger, Joe Sebok started a TwoPlusTwo thread to "address some UB-related comments," among other things.

In the post, Sebok reiterated some facts about the UlitmateBet superuser scandal, which are summarized below:

He admits that the new UB management has made some mistakes, but he does not believe 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.”
Both UB and Sebok want any and all information to be released.
UB does not censor, encourage, nor control what Sebok says and does.
Sebok continues to believe that the current ownership is different from the former ownership.
He will attempt to answer reasonable questions on TwoPlusTwo
Indeed, Sebok went on to answer selected questions and tried to establish “some common ground” on some of the UltimateBet facts. The question-and-answer thread, which has been active over the past few days, can be viewed in its entirety on TwoPlusTwo.

Just Conjecturin’, Volume 30

Haley Hintze has been as diligent as anyone in investigating the UltimateBet superuser scandal. In fact, she very well may be the world’s foremost authority on the situation. In her blog, she has posted volumes of information regarding all things UltimateBet in a series known as “Just Conjecturin’.” In her most recent blog, aptly titled, Volume 30: Naming Names — Greg Pierson, Hintze wrote that “Pierson, the President and CEO of ieLogic and Iovation, the company behind the company behind UltimateBet, was another of the likely superusers behind the scandal.”

In that blog, Hintze explained how Pierson’s wife, Janelle Lynn Pierson, became involved in an expensive legal battle after having an affair with one of her high school students. Apparently, the whole debacle put the Pierson's in a tough economic position, which was a possible motivation leading to the cheating scandal’s inception. From there, Hintze laid out Pierson’s position within the company, one that would allow him to develop the “God Mode” program, along with his relationship with Russ Hamilton and Mansour Matloubi, noting, “It was Pierson who had to have held the programming reins, and who reached an agreement with Hamilton and Matloubi [the operational bosses of UltimateBet] to allow the God Mode code to be inserted into the UB client, which in turn allowed the cheating to take place.”

Hintze went on to suggest that perhaps, “Pierson got cold feet about the cheating and decided to cover his own tracks while leaving other cheating accounts in place that could be easily tied to others, as in those pointing to Hamilton.” Hintze’s argument, which is simply summarized here, is backed up with plenty of facts and circumstantial evidence that lends credence to her hypothesis.

For more on the subject, check out Hintze's entire blog.

No doubt the new allegations will inspire new information and responses concerning the UltimateBet superuser scandal, in which case, PokerNews will be here to keep you abreast of the latest developments.

Cheating Casinos Back in the Day...What Would it Have Been Like?

Las Vegas in 1931

Did you ever dream you could step into a time tunnel and step out way back when and apply what you know now about making money to back then? I am not talking about betting on a historical or sporting event for which you know the outcome even though it has not yet taken place. I am talking about applying a specific skill that you have today to a task in the past. One analogy would be to have twenty-first century equipment or weaponry to be used in construction or deconstruction (war).

Well, I have had this dream (although in a fully conscious state, so it's more a thought than a dream) of applying my casino cheating ability to casinos way back when. Let's say I stepped out of a time machine into Las Vegas, Nevada in 1931, the year that casino gambling was legalized in the Silver State. What casino moves would I do in 1930s Vegas casinos?

First, let's take a look at what casino surveillance was like back then. There were no cameras. There weren't even catwalks (narrow corridors above the casino tables whose floors has one-way mirror patterns so that the action could be observed from above). At the time, the only surveillance was slick ex-cheats and cons walking around the casino looking for suspicious activity that could be cheating.

So, would I run up to a roulette table and do a third-section pastpost?

Absolutely not! That's because the casino wiseguys lurking around the tables knew how easy and popular it was to pastpost roulette tables. And...they would have a great chance of seeing the pastposter's hands out on the layout when they weren't supposed to be there.

How 'bout my famed Savannah roulette pinch move?

Well, she would have worked but there would have been the chance that one of the sharpies could see the high denomination check hidden from the dealer from a position behind the bet. That big-value chip would have been sticking out in the rear. The Savannah move was really primed for beating the surveillance cameras.

What about the bread-and-butter blackjack ten-oh-five?

You hit the nail on the head! This move would have been the best because it is done when the blackjack player's hands are supposed to be on the layout, mainly when picking up the winning chips the dealer just paid him.

Okay, I know this posting is just mental masturbation--but OH how I would love to go back in time for just one day and go to work on Vegas's old-time casinos!

PS: Now that I think of it, I could have made a fortune by simply collecting the gold coins and silver dollars used in those casinos and bringing them back to today! I wouldn't have had to cheat!

Is Cheating at Chess Catching up with Cheating at Poker?...Read This!

Source: Independent.co.uk

The tranquil world of international chess has been thrown into uproar by accusations of intricate "cheating by text message" against three senior French players.

Two grandmasters and an international master have been found guilty by their own national organisation of "violating sporting ethics" at the Chess Olympiad – world team championships – in Khanty-Mansiysk Siberia in September.

The trio, who deny the charges, were accused of devising an elaborate scheme – using text messages and choreographed movements around the competition hall – to convey advice from a computer programme while matches were in progress.

One of the suspect games occurred in a match between England and France, in which the young French international grandmaster, Sébastien Feller, 19, beat David Howell, then also 19, the youngest chess grandmaster in the UK. Another occurred in a match between France and Georgia.

Two of the accused men, Mr Feller and Cyril Marzolo, 32, have been suspended from competition for two years. The third, the team captain Arnaud Hauchard, 39, – accused of conveying pre-arranged codes for moves by his own movements between tables – has been removed from his position. All three men deny the allegations, which seem certain to end in the courts.

This is the first time that formal accusations of cheating of this kind have surfaced in international chess. "There have often been suspicions but there has never before been such clear evidence of cheating at the highest level," said Laurent Verat, director general of the Fédération Française des Echecs.

Mr Verat said: "Even Garry Kasparov (the former world champion) has rung me about it. He is astounded."

The affair has split the country's best players down the middle – into the allegedly dishonest and, inevitably, black and the outraged, pure whites. Three other members of the team at the Olympiad – Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Laurent Fressinet and Romain Edouard – have given public backing to the allegations against their team-mates.

The three accused men claim they are the victims of a conspiracy and internal team "jealousies".

Mr Marzolo was not in the team at the Olympiad. It is alleged he followed games on the internet from Nancy in eastern France. According to evidence given to the federation's disciplinary committee he fed the moves into Firebird, a powerful chess computer program.

Using pre-arranged numerical codes, he allegedly sent Firebird's recommended next moves to Mr Feller or Mr Hauchard in text messages which looked innocently like French mobile telephone numbers. Mr Hauchard allegedly conveyed the moves to Mr Feller while games were in progress, by moving between tables in the competition hall.

The tables, it is alleged, had been given pre-arranged codes equivalent to the standard notation of the 64 squares on a chess board between A1 and H8. If Mr Hauchard stood beside table B3 and moved to, say, table B4, Mr Feller knew that the computer recommended that he move a piece from B3 to B4.

The alleged manipulations came to light because Mr Marzolo did not have a mobile telephone of his own. As a result of financial problems he had been barred by all mobile companies. His telephone had been loaned to him by another senior player for whom he once worked, Joanna Pomian, the vice president of the federation.

During the championship, she accidentally discovered a message from Mr Hauchard in Russia which read: "Hurry up and send the moves." She checked the records of the line and found Mr Marzolo had sent 180 messages to the other accused men during the competition. Most consisted of telephone numbers.

Investigations revealed that the third and fourth digits corresponded with the sequence numbers of recommended moves and the fifth to the eighth digits were coded references to squares on the chess board.

Not so fair players

* Major Charles Ingram and former college lecturer Tecwen Whittock were convicted in 2003 of conspiracy to cheat TV quiz programme Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? out of £1m. Whittock, who sat in the audience, coughed to signal the correct responses to Ingram, who sat in the hot seat.

* In 2007, Yau Yiv Lam made around £250,000 by using spy equipment to cheat at poker in six London casinos. A mini-camera hidden up his sleeve filmed cards as they were dealt and relayed the footage to an accomplice sitting in a nearby van. The accomplice then radioed card details to a third cheat sitting at the poker table with Lam, who profited from the set-up. The player's never-ending luck prompted casino bosses to raise the alarm and the trio were later jailed for nine months.

When Should a Poker or Casino Cheat Say "No?"

Okay, you're the chief of a professional poker cheating or casino cheating team and you heard that a particular casino or poker room is really ripe for the pickings. So, is there anything that should stop you dead in your tracks from hitting this potential poker room or casino gold mine?

You bet your ass there is!

Here's a good example: Back in 1979 I was lying on the beach in the south of France enjoying a day off after hitting the casinos along the French Cote d'Azur. My partner Joe Classon was lying next to me reading the Herald Tribune. He came across an article about a new casino opening up inside the Istanbul Hilton (yes, that's Turkey!). Full of enthusiasm, he immediately jumped up as if he wanted to pack his bag right there on the spot and catch a boat across the Mediterranean to Turkey. But just two weeks before I had seen the movie "Midnight Express." If you don't remember, that's the real-life film where Billy Hayes, a young American, got caught at the Istanbul airport boarding his plane to New York with a few pounds of hashish taped around his torso. The film depicted his four years in a horrible Turkish prison.

Get the message?

If not, there was also the possibility in Turkey of thieves getting their hands cut off instead of doing jail time...or both!

Get the message now?

Back in 1993, we were lying on another beach, this time in Greece, and Joe was reading (he loved to read) an article about ex-PLO chairman Yassir Arafat's new casino opening on the West Bank. That's right! If you didn't know it, Arafat and the PLO once operated a casino right on the West Bank.
When Joe jumped up again, full of even greater enthusiasm, and said, "Richard, let's go bomb Arafat's casino!" I looked at him as if he were crazy and said, "What are you, nuts!...Did you forget you're Jewish?

My point: Casino and poker cheat teams had better investigate the laws and penalites for those caught cheating in each venue they dare to venture!

Two More Cases of Insider Dealer Cheating in Singapore--This Time It's Roulette

Crooked Casino Dealers in Singapore's cheat-plagued casinos have been working in cahoots with gamblers to cheat the country's two giant casinos, Resorts World Sentosa and the Sands Marina Bay. Mostly the casino-cheat partnerships have been attacking the big-money wheels and the Pai Gow tables, but now we are getting news of two major insider roulette cheating cases. One involves the dealer actually controlling the spin of the ball to a point just enough to make it a profitable casino cheating enterprise, both involve deliberately overpaying winning bets.

In early October, 2010, 24-year-old Ng Wuey Kiang and 39-year-old Leong Teck Leong cheated the Resorts World Santosa out of $30,000. Ng controlled the landing of the roulette ball to within 20 of the 38 numnber slots on the wheel with a close to 90 percent accuracy, which is good enough to get the money. I do not know how good his spins looked, meaning that they could have been very short spins that would be much easier to control than a long legitimate spin. In any case, the dealer and his accomplice both received 21 months in prison. Singapore is handing out pretty stiff sentences to casino cheats, trying to make examples and stem the wave of casino cheting that has hit these two young casinos since they opened last year.

To make matters worse, when Ng missed the 20-number target he overpaid Leong n the next winning spin to make up the money they lost on those spins that didn't hit the group of numbers, something really stupid. Surveillance cameras finally caught on to the overpayments if not the crooked spins.

Casino surveillance departments in Singapore are quite weak, which is understandable, and they need to get some serious game protection training as its casinos are rivalling Foxwoods in Connecticut as the casino-cheating candy stores of the world.

Leong's attorney told the judge that his client had quit hia job and become a compulsive gambler, losing his life savings of $50,000. The judge did not take that into consideration at sentencing.

My take: I can only imagine how much insider casino cheating is going on in Singapore's two casinos. It has to be massive, and we are only hearing about the few crooked casino dealers getting caught.

The Poker Cheating Risks When Broadcasting Final Tables Live

Source: PokerNews

The title of this article should be “Broadcasting Final Tables Live, with a One-Hour Delay While Showing Hole Cards, is the Future of Poker." That may be a mouthful, but it is necessary to add the amendment as you'll soon discover. In addition, broadcasting live technically isn’t even the future since it already happened in January when the final table of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event was shown on ESPN2 with a 60- to 90-minute delay. Most recently, the same feat was duplicated when the Bicycle Casino aired the final table of The Big Event on their popular Live at the Bike webcast.

While it would be nice for a final table to be broadcast live with hole cards, there are obvious security concerns that make it implausible (cheating, collusion, etc.); however, by airing it on a slight delay, the action has a chance to play out so that the aired hands no longer pose a security risk. On the flip side, it does provide the players with valuable information they can use to their advantage, an issue I’ll address later in this article. For the sake of this piece, whenever I say “live,” I’m implying that a short delay would be observed. With that said, let me tell you why I think broadcasting final tables live is a good idea.

The benefits of a live broadcast are overwhelming and hard to ignore. First, playing a final table live ensures that no one will know in advance who the winner is, and this is much more entertaining. This is in direct contrast to programs like the World Poker Tour, whose tournaments air months after the event has concluded. This time gap provides the poker media, PokerNews included, the opportunity to publicize the tournament’s outcome before fans get the chance to enjoy the action. Think of it as you would a football game. It’s not as much fun to watch a game when you know who wins compared to watching the action unfold before your eyes. The concept applies to poker tournaments, as well.

Second, a live broadcast allows the friends and family of the final tablists to share in their loved one's special moment. For example, The Big Event final tablist Bryan Leskowitz hailed from the East coast and obviously not all of his supporters could be in California to support him. By broadcasting live, people with vested interest were able to tune in and share in a truly one-of-a-kind experience. Finally, broadcasting live opens a whole new window of opportunity for sponsors, advertisers and the like. I'm sure you can use your imagination as far as that is concerned.

While airing a final table live seems like a good idea, some critics argue that doing so is detrimental to the players. How could this be? Supposedly, it provides players with advantageous information they can use against their opponents. For example, during the final table of The Big Event, Joe Hachem often mixed it up with Taylor von Kriegenbergh by using three- and four-bets. By broadcasting live, von Kriegenbergh could simply wait for the delay to pass, watch Hachem’s antics, and adapt accordingly.

While this argument is certainly true, the counterargument is that every player has this option, so no unfair advantage is bestowed on one player over the others. If this explanation doesn’t satisfy the critics, I wonder how they'd feel if the players were allowed to pick and choose the hands they shared, which is exactly what the Bicycle Casino offered on its Live at the Bike webcast. This allowed the players to reveal or conceal whatever information they deemed fit. I’m a fan of this option, as were all the players at the final table, and I believe it should be offered in any live broadcast format.

Kelley O’Hara, who is director of marketing at the Bicycle Casino and the woman largely responsible for Live at the Bike, as well as her crew and those who arranged the PCA's live broadcast, are not afraid of innovation. The good news is that they’ve been rewarded with both positive reviews and decent ratings. Likewise, PokerNews' own Gloria Balding, who was involved with introducing live streaming webcasts to poker, isn't surprised to see the phenomenon catching on:

"I started out in poker producing live web-streamed final tables for WSOP Circuit events. At the time, this is 3-5 years ago mind you, it was very difficult to get poker players much less sponsors to comprehend the idea of a web-streamed LIVE poker tournaments. To their credit, ESPN grasped the future of broadcasting and consistently backed the ESPN360 broadcast regardless of viewership. In recent months I have been amused at how the poker community has come to embrace web-cast as the 'next big thing'. I smile to myself knowing the long hard road it has been to get advertisers and viewers alike to grasp the game-changing aspect of internet broadcasts. The irony is most people have forgotten about my experience producing since I stepped in front of the camera for PokerNews, but the same ethos of creating content that is true to the internet is what I think keeps PokerNews ahead of the game in terms of our web-based video content. The internet is infinite. It is what entirely what viewers and websites make of it."

Given that, it’s hard to believe we won’t see more final tables of major tournaments broadcast live in the near future. Perhaps even at the World Series of Poker. My sentiments are largely echoed in the poker community and among many of the top pros. While that is all well and good, the big question is: What do the fans think? After all, final tables are broadcast for their enjoyment.

Online Poker Cheat Bots Continue Their Forward March

Ever since Full Tilt Poker banned more than 400 accounts from its online poker site last year for using poker bots to cheat its games, the menace from the nefarious online cheating devices continues to sprout. With improvements in bot program technology that increases bots' artificial intelligence, those using sophisticated bot programs now play with a very significant edge over those online players playing honestly.

Michael Josem, a head security adviser at PokerStars, announced that PokerStars, which has always been at the front in the online-poker-cheating war, is currently investing large amouonts of money to fight the ever-encroaching cheat-enemy. He stressed that "human" online poker players should be able to play and enjoy themselves on PokerStars without fears of being cheated.

My take: Well, one thing I can say is that PokerStars seems to be the leader of all online poker sites when it comes to combating the huge cheating epidemic that has plagued all online poker sites. If any site can make a significant dent in the bots, it is certainly PokerStars.

Prahlad Friedman Lances Online Poker Cheating Accusations of His Own!...Targets Haxton and Bonomo

Source: BestPokerSites.org

A few weeks after the wild and crazy ride that the John Racener/Sorel Mizzi/Shaun Deeb Chinese Poker fiasco took us on, we have yet another “out of the blue” cheating accusation, this time involving Team UB Poker’s newest sponsored pro, Prahlad Friedman, and two of the top online poker players in the world Isaac Haxton and Justin Bonomo.

Friedman took to his Twitter account this weekend and in two successive Tweets of less than 140 characters each was able to call out both Haxton and Bonomo for multi-accounting:

“Isaac Haxton and Justin Bonomo share and switch accounts often. Was playing random guy and looked up his stats. Identical to Hax,”

“Haxton knows I don’t want to play him, so scummy. Beware of their scummy tactics. They have been doing this for years. No more.”

Friedman is known for speaking his mind –which is the nice way of saying he talks before he thinks—so it’s unclear if this is just a player on tilt, or if there is actually any evidence of possible wrongdoing on Haxton’s part.

Obviously as soon as Friedman’s Tweets hit the internet the 2+2 forum created the obligatory lengthy thread on the topic, which got all the more juicier when Bonomo posted his own reply on 2+2 –I’m not sure exactly how Friedman implicated him in the above Tweets other than naming him, as it was Haxton that he seems to have been suspicious of. Bonomo, who was one of the original players busted for multi-accounting back in the day wrote a detailed response to the accusations stating:

“While I did some things I’m not proud of when I was 19, I was given a second chance and take that very seriously. I have not done anything unethical in poker in 5+ years now… I hold myself to a very high ethical standard. I am unbelievably lucky to have been given a second chance, and I’m not going to squander that. Needless to say, I don’t take these accusations Prah has been throwing around lightly,”

Of course, no reply would be complete without a one-on-one challenge at the poker tables being issued –the poker version of an 18th century duel– which Bonomo did by challenging Friedman to a $50/$100 NLHE match for 10,000 hands.

Thus far we have not heard from Haxton, and there has been no follow-up from Friedman. Hopefully this time we receive a little more closure than we did in the Racenre vs. Mizzi episode.

Sebok Gives His Version of Latest UB.com Online Poker Cheating Scandal

Source: Poker News

This week, Joe Sebok gave two interviews to address the recent announcements regarding the UltimateBet superuser scandal. If you recall, over the past few weeks, Travis Makar released two e-mails, one that contained a “God Mode” attachment and one that centered on a blackmail situation between UB COO Paul Leggett and Zoltan “Brainwashdodo” Rozsa.

On Wednesday, March 2, 2011, Sebok sat down with Mark Gahagan and Matt Kaufman of CardRunners for an interview regarding Makar, the missing UB histories, and to present some answers from Leggett on previously posed questions. To kick things off, Sebok claimed that UB attempted to reach out to Makar but had difficulties connecting. When asked whether Makar had reciprocated their attempts to communicate, Sebok was unsure but emphasized he wanted any and all information to be released if at all possible.

The hosts went on to ask whether UB would be prepared to offer refunds if missing hand histories -- which are 10 percent of the hands associated with the superuser accounts -- were revealed and showed that additional accounts had been cheated. Sebok responded that he believed so but that many critics would never be satisfied no matter what the new UB does to rectify the situation, and that at some point you have to say “enough is enough” in regards to the refunds.

The interview proceeded to turn its attention to the extortion e-mail between Rozsa and Leggett. Sebok claimed to have talked to Leggett, who admitted writing the e-mail, and believed the correspondence didn’t prove anything except that Leggett considered paying the money, an act Sebok found to be natural and nonsuspicious.*

*The act of considering to pay, not actually paying, which Sebok agreed would be wrong.

Late in the interview, the host revealed that they had given Sebok questions to pose directly to Leggett. Sebok had done just that and brought back answers discussing a number of issues. First, Leggett wanted to clarify a previous statement that he had never met nor spoken with Russ Hamilton. Leggett’s response confirmed that he had never met Hamilton, but that he did in fact speak with him once during the early stages of the superuser investigation. Second, the rumor that Leggett sent armed thugs to Rozsa’s house to intimidate him was not in context. Instead, it was simply a company guard sent to verify Rozsa’s home address. Finally, Leggett confirmed that no one working for or involved with the current UB company was associated with the cheating scandal.

A few days later, on Sunday, March 6, 2011, Sebok sat down for another interview with Poker Static Hot Seat hosts Bret Oliverio and Eric Bickel. There he reiterated what he said in the CardRunners interview but in a manner that seemed a bit more composed and scripted. It was there that Sebok admitted:

“We have to be able to say, ‘Hey, we screwed up.’ And probably this e-mail communication is one of those things, ‘Hey, we screwed up. We probably shouldn’t have dealt with this guy but we did. It doesn’t make us Russ Hamiltons ... it doesn’t mean we cheated with him, but let’s own up to it and say hey we did this thing ... It’s a far cry from the actual, did they help these guys cheat ... That has always been my stance, if I ever find any information that says these guys did this, or Paul is lying to me, or anything like that, then I’ll leave. I’ve said that for a long, long time.”

Sebok went on to urge anyone with information -- whether it be Makar, poker media outlets, or even Haley Hintze -- to make it available to everyone. Hintze, of course is the woman who has taken it upon herself to conduct an in-depth investigation into the superuser scandal, often revealing her findings in her blog. Speaking of Hintze, in her latest post, dated February 28, 2011, she examined the aforementioned e-mail in detail and previewed the focus of her upcoming post.

“I have very strong reasons to believe that ‘superuser1’ will turn out to be company founder Greg Pierson, and I will devote a very lengthy Volume 30 of this series to laying out the extensive circumstantial case that points to Pierson. It's a post I've delayed writing for quite some time, partly in hopes that a true smoking gun would emerge to buttress the many puzzle pieces I've already obtained. It's also a distasteful post, as it goes into motive for the entire UB cheating scandal getting started, something no outside investigator has yet adequately explained.”

Given that Hintze’s aforementioned blog had not been released at the time of the interviews, the topic was obviously not addressed. However, it does suggest that this story will become more complicated in the near future. To summarize what Sebok said in the two interviews:

He wants the information to come out and urges Makar, and anyone else with pertinent information, to come forward.
He urged Leggett to be forward and honest about his email correspondence with “Brainwashdodo.”
Just because a company doesn’t want information to come out does not necessarily mean it is “cheating” related.
If he finds out Leggett has been lying and the new UB played a role in the cheating scandal, then he will leave the company.
While Sebok did not necessarily present new information, the interviews drew a lot of attention from the poker community. Some were reassured by Sebok, while others were not convinced; for example, Todd Witteles, one of Sebok’s biggest and most outspoken critics took to the DonkDown forums and offered his opinion on the latter interview.

“I actually hated this interview a lot more than the Cardrunners one. At least the Cardrunners one featured some brutal honesty on Joe's part -- that he didn't feel people deserved to be paid back if they persisted with their ‘hating’ on him and UB. This [Poker Static] interview featured Joe staying calm and repeating that he'll resign if any proof comes to light that UB's crooked, but that he has faith in Paul Leggett/UB. He basically answered nothing. This interview also focused more on Joe himself and less about UB. Nobody cares that much about Joe's own plight. I want to see reps like Joe squirm when they are asked the tough UB-related questions.”

Given the fact that Hintze is preparing to release more information, and that Makar continues to withhold his evidence, it is clear the UltimateBet superuser scandal drama is far from over. As always, PokerNews will be here to bring you any and all developments as they happen.

New WSOP Media Rules to Combat Blogger/Reporter Tournament Cheating...Are They Fair---or Ridiculous?

I have been blogging about the recent poker tournament cheating scams where players are using reporters and bloggers who sit and hang around the tables ostensibly looking to interview players and report on the action but who are really looking at the players' hole cards and signalling those values to players they are in cohoots with. The biggest reporter/blogger poker tournament cheat scam so far involved Ali Tekintamgac on the Partouche Poker Tour; he won the WPT event in Barcelona but was accused of using fake bloggers to spy his opponents' hole cards.

So now the WSOP rules committee has decided to implement two new rules to combat this type of collusion cheating, which is indeed serious and has that very type of repercussion on the outcome of final tables and near final tables during a poker tournament.

The first new rule that is to protect the integrity of the tournament and the security of the players and staff, according to a WSOP spokesman, is that no members of the media will be permitted at any single table for more than 5 minutes during each half hour. Well, this is a bit hard to digest, especially when reporters and bloggers are looking for big names involved in big pots. It often takes more than five minutes for a big pot to develop and play out, therefore reporters and bloggers would not be able to stay and cover that type of action, which is highly coveted by poker fans in front of TV and computer screens.

The second new anti-media-cheat poker rule is that members of the media will not be permitted to talk to players while cards are on the table. This will have the same type of negative effect as the first new rule and will also force bloggers and reporters to reduce the details on hands and strategies recounted by players involved as well as the general poker talk and entertaining stories related to the play of tournaments.

My take: I think these new anti-poker-tournament cheat rules are exaggerated. In fact, better than to iniciate this would be to increase the scrutiny on who the reporters and bloggers around the tables actually are. Since Ali Tekintamgac was accused of using FAKE bloggers with no legitimate accreditation and that the vast majority of these reporter/blogger poker cheats have no real affiliation to any accredited blog or media source, we in the poker world would all be better served by a format that really checks out all reporters and bloggers attending major poker tournaments.