ABSOLUTE POKER'S SISTER NAMED IN MORE 'SUPERUSER' ALLEGATIONS

14 March 2008

Now Ultimate Bet is under the microscope


Allegations of suspicious and cheating play that surfaced in January this year at Ultimate Bet.com and were initially denied, have been confirmed this week.

Owned (like its sister poker room Absolute Poker.com) by former Mohawk chief Joe Norton's Tokwiro Enterprises enrg., Ultimate has confirmed to the poker information site 2+2.com that it has found evidence of ‘abnormal’ playing activity at its online poker site.

The allegations of cheating play surfaced widely on Internet gambling message boards at the beginning of the year following a major cheating scandal that resulted in Absolute Poker.com paying a $500 000 fine to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission after an independent audit by Gaming Associates.

The lack of detail in the KGC announcement that finalised the Absolute Poker issue resulted in the jurisdiction being ridiculed by players, and its findings branded a whitewash.

In that case, a still unidentified "consultant" to the company was found to have used a ‘backdoor’ in the poker software created by an upgrade which enabled him to view other players ‘hole cards’.

Now 2+2 reports in an apparent reprise of the Absolute affair that UltimateBet and its licensing authority, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, were alerted on January 12th to allegations that a player with the online handle “NioNio” exhibited abnormally high winning statistics, resulting in accusations that the player had an unfair advantage during play.

The allegations also included reports of suspicious activity concerning the deletion of the NioNio account and other accounts that may have been related to the cheating.

According to 2+2, UltimateBet says it immediately called in an independent third-party expert to review “hundreds of thousands of hand histories, all of which were promptly locked down and made available to the expert”. It is unknown if this "independent third party expert" was Gaming Associates.

An UltimateBet spokesman is quoted as saying: “The initial findings of our third-party expert confirm that the NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal, and we have expanded the investigation to look into whether an unfair advantage existed, how such a scheme might have been perpetrated, and whether additional accounts beyond those of NioNio were involved.

“The investigation has proven to be extremely complex and, therefore, has been more extensive and taken much longer than initially expected. We continue to aggressively pursue the matter and will communicate the findings of our full investigation to our regulatory authority and to our customer base as soon as practicable.”

This unfolding story appears to mirror the Absolute Poker developments as it develops and will be closely watched by players and industry obervers. Thus far no press releases on the issue can be found from the companies involved.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa