UnBelievable

Anyone reading this blog probably already knows, the shysters who run Absolute Poker also run Ultimate Bet. Back in October 2006 (just prior to Bush signing the UIGEA into law), the company that owned UB (Excapsa Software) was bought out by the company that owns Absolute (Blast Off Ltd.).

Now I realize are a lot of people in the world who don’t read this blog, and among that group are a significant number of folks who play online poker at Absolute Poker and/or Ultimate Bet. Safe to say (I think) most of those playing on those sites don’t have much more than a vague idea about what went so terribly wrong on Absolute last fall and/or AP’s connection to UB.

Anyone reading this blog might also know that on learning about the superuser cheating scandal at AP, I decided to pull my cabbage outta Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet tout de suite. Among my posts about the AP scandal I also shared the friggin’ madness I had to endure to withdraw my funds from Ultimate Bet. Anyone who took up Absolute Poker on their offer late last summer to allow unlimited transfers back and forth between the sites -- for “funds to seamlessly flow from one poker room to the other” (as they put it) -- probably should read that post before trying to withdraw from UB.

Since that time, I’ve seen a few interesting threads on the forums referring to various problems players have had on UB in particular. Among the usual complaints about support, I have seen three fairly specific issues here lately regarding the play on UB.

First, there’s the “wait list freezing” problem that many users seem to have suffered. (I, too, had this one happen to me during the short time I played on the site.) Whenever a player is playing on one table and then adds his or her name to the wait list for another, the site tends to freeze when the wait list pops up. A not insignificant software flaw, that. Here’s one poster complaining about that one. And here’s another.

Then there’s the issue of “all in abuse” -- that is, players purposely timing out and thereby taking advantage of unlimited all-in protections. Whereas most sites limit the number of times a player can disconnect and receive such protection, UB has no means for doing so. Thus, anytime a player gets to the river with a missed draw and does not want to call a bet to see a showdown, he or she can simply time out and get there for free. Saw some recent gripes about this one, but people have been upset about this issue for years.

Hassles, yes. But these issues have more to do with functionality, really, than the site’s integrity. Then yesterday I saw this jaw-dropping post. I’m not going to summarize it -- read for yourself. The post was submitted by “leatherass” and is titled “Are you kidding me UB?”:

I was talking to my friend whose screen name is Forcewithme on the phone today while he was playing UB. I told him I’d sweat him for a few minutes while we were on the phone and pulled up the Lobby. Without realizing it, I logged in as Forcewithme. Apparently when he was at my house last week he played on my computer and saved the log in to my computer. SO when I thought I was logging in as me I actually logged in as him. After watching him play for a few minutes I checked the cashier to see if I had any money in there and saw quite a bit of money and that is when I noticed that I was logged in as him......while he was sitting at 6 tables!!! So I told him that I was logged in as him and he was like, “Are you kidding me?” So we decided to see if I could play some tables and sure enough I sat and played some .01/.02 NL tables while he had 6 tables fired up from his house 100 miles away. We couldn’t even believe it. Has it really gotten this bad over at UB?

Responses confirm what is described to be the case -- multiple people can log into Ultimate Bet from different locations using the same username/password.

Crap on a cracker! Anyone need more reasons not to play at Ultimate Bet?

(Not even getting into rumors of another superuser-type scandal happening at UB.)