This bit of poker news has the poker world simply saying that it’s “about time”. After Black Friday hit and some of the largest online poker sites found themselves either not allowing online poker players from the United States, or not having enough players to be able to continue to run games; a large number of those players were searching for ways to get their money back. This was the the story for players on the old site Ultimate Bet, and it seems that as we approach 9 months after the fact, that the players on UB are now fed up. This is also paired with a pretty big cheating scandal that occurred back in 2008, and this is where our story comes in.
This led to eight of the bigger professional poker players who played on the site deciding to file a lawsuit against the controlling company of the ex-poker site. The company is called Excapsa Software, Inc, and the players will be seeking damages for their role in the cheating scandal that came out back in 2008. The players who are involved are Brad Booth, Thomas Koral, Daniel Ashman, Dave Lizmi, Greg Laverly, Joseph Sanders, Daniel Smith, and Dustin Woolf. All of them listed specific amounts that they are filing for in their damage claims, which range between $20k for Smith and Koral, all the way to $500k for Booth and Lizmi. All other players are in between those two numbers.
The scandal that is being mentioned here related to the the site and their controlling companies inside players using software to see players’ hole cards. This led to them winning millions of dollars, and before long they were caught. There are eight different Causes of Action in this suit, ranging from conspiracy and conversion, to things like fraud and negligence as well. The players above are hopoing to get both “monetary relief” and “equitable relief”
While these players are definitely hoping that the site and their controlling company are punished for what they’ve done, they definitely want to get back the money that they lost from this situation as well. It had to have taken a good amount of time for these players to put together the numbers that they feel they are owed, so we will see what the outcome of this lawsuit is.
Every poker player out there has heard of the online poker site Ultimate Bet. The site was surrounded by scandal, and eventually was done in after Black Friday. While the bulk of the attention went towards Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, Ultimate Bet wasn’t far behind in terms of a scandal. While Full Tilt and Stars owed their players quite a bit of money, Ultimate Bet owed money as well, but at this point players have essentially given up on any chances of getting that money back. Once Black Friday had come and gone, players on UB had hoped that this was the end of the bad news. Unfortunately it hasn’t come to an end just yet, as their was recently a new scandal that has come out of the wood works about the site.
Absolute Poker, including UB (formerly Ultimate Bet) brand, hereafter “Absolute Poker,” issued the following statement today:
The Feds are once again going after poker sites without defining what “illegal gambling” is. Without a real law, or a working definition, this amounts to just a strong arm shakedown. “We are big tough guys so we will tell you what to do, even though we have no lawful basis to do so”