Net Bet Blog

Cheating in online Poker is often talked about and feared and in some cases true. After the Absolute poker scandal UltimateBet get nailed after a long investigation.

Luckily the average fish like me is unlikely to be cheated as the cheats are more likely to target the bigger stakes tables and large jackpot tournaments. Find me on PKR under "netbet" and say hello and take my money.

I am sure that the amounts of money involved will run into millions. Knowing the hole cards would allow punters to quite literally win every game they played in a relatively short period of time.

The big question is whether this is going on elsewhere. Computer programmers are clever people. It is stories like this that undermine the credibility of online poker. The answer - to only play at sites with good systems which tend to be those quoted on the stockmarket.



UltimateBet Parent Company in Second Cheating Scandal [Gaming Industry Media]

UltimateBet.com has revealed that an individual or individuals who formerly worked for the site were able to cheat players for a period spanning 21 months. It's the second time in less than a year that parent company Tokwiro Enterprises has had to make such an admission. Another of its properties, AbsolutePoker.com, revealed a similar security breach last fall.

Tokwiro says the perpetrators were employed by UltimateBet prior to its purchase by Tokwiro in October 2006. They obtained opponents' hole card information by manipulating software code that was part of a legacy auditing system, and they were active players on the network from March 2006 to December 2007.

The company has not revealed how much money the cheaters won, but evidence indicates it could be millions of dollars.

'Tokwiro is taking full responsibility for this situation and will immediately begin refunding UlimateBet customers for any losses that were incurred as a result of unfair play,' notes the company's press statement.

UltimateBet, like its sister site AbsolutePoker, is licensed and regulated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. The Commission fined Tokwiro $500,000 in January as a result of last fall's security breach at AbsolutePoker. In that case, it was 'a trusted consultant' of the company that had manipulated software to view opponents' hole cards. The company ended up paying $1.6 million to customers who were affected by the breach.