ABSOLUTE POKER & UB AFTER BLACK FRIDAY

Absolute Poker.com, UltimateBet.com and UB.com are online poker sites operated by the same owners called Cereus Poker Network which is privatly owned through Blanca Games which purchased all assets from Tokwiro Enterprises in August 2010¹.

The persons named in the indictment on behalf of this company were Scott Tom (part owner of Absolute Poker) and Brent Beckley (Absolute Poker Payments and Risk Management Director).

Beckley, who was also a co-founder of Absolute Poker, plead guilty to misleading banks and is likely to serve 12-18 months in prison after making a plea agreement².

Absolute Poker made strong attempts to re-establish their integrity after a scandal back in 2007 when it was revealed that one player made it possible for himself to see other players' hole cards through a “superuser” account within the poker software³.

But the damage done to their name had merely started to fade when it became known that this poker operator was named along with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker in the federal criminal case on Black Friday.

As opposed to PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet refused to close for US players, but it quickly became evident that things were not in order. Not only did Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet remain open for real money games for US player, seemingly they also allowed cashouts for US players. But they still lost a lot of traffic from US players and quickly started laying off most of their operational staff. After a while gameplay was also stopped and withdrawals were not processed.

While PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker released relatively quick statements following Black Friday, it took until Thursday in the following week in order for Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet to comment:

“At this time, Absolute Poker’s top priority is, and must be, the refund of balances to its and UB’s U.S. players. However, given the far-reaching consequences of the U.S. Attorney’s actions for Absolute Poker and for the entire poker community, Absolute Poker believes that the responsible course of action is to review with its attorneys the relevant court filings before taking any action.”⁴

Their domains remain open on dot eu and dot net URLs but none of these sites are mentioned among the poker rooms on Pokerscout.com with active real money players on May 2, 2012.

1 PokerNews.com August 27, 2010
2 CardPlayer.com December 20, 2011
3 PokerNewsDaily.com May 11, 2010
4 PokerNewsDaily.com April 22, 2011