Poker Pros Sue Ultimate Bet; Liking Leverage
Pros Bring Case Against Ultimate Bet
By: Phil
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A trio of well-known poker pros are among the eight players bringing a civil case against Excapsa Software – the previous owners of poker room Ultimate Bet.
Canadian Brad Booth and Americans Dustin ‘Neverwin’ Woolf and Tom Koral have been named among the octet that have filed a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) complaint against the Cereus Poker Network website.
All eight plaintiffs are former players with the now-defunct UB and claim that the poker room embezzled $20 million from regular customers by means of an in-house hole-card sting maintained by some former employees.
Brad Booth, of Whitehorse in the Yukon, has enjoyed some highs in his live poker career, having recorded his biggest cash win – for $319,180 – back in June of 2006 after finishing third in the $10,000 buy-in World Poker Tour (WPT) No-Limit Hold’em Championship event as part of the Mandalay Bay Poker Championship in Las Vegas.
Brad Booth Blasts UB Over Scam
And he has been particularly vociferous in his criticism of UB when talking about the scam, which hit the headlines across North America, following complaints from players that employees with the company had been using peculiar usernames and utilising software to view opponents’ hidden hole cards.
Brad Booth believes the scandal has ruined much of his life, recalling as he spoke to host Bryan ‘The Icon’ Micon of DonkDown Radio back on February 23 last year that he is certain UB has stolen $2 million of his own cash, as well as significant sums of money he had borrowed from fellow players.
Chicago’s Tom Koral – a very successful live poker pro, having pocketed $226,708 for winning the $3,125 No-Limit Hold’em main event at the Chicago Poker Classic in Harrahs Horseshoe Casino in March last year – and 18-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) in-the-money player Woolf, of Los Angeles, have also voiced their suspicions.
Former UB Players Demand Damages
The complaint revealed that the players are looking for an injunction, as well as damages, relating to a series of charges, including negligence, fraud and unfair business practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, interference with prospective economic damage, conversion and RICO conspiracy.
Ultimate Bet were, of course, among numerous online poker sites – including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and fellow Cereus Poker Network website Absolute Poker – shut down by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Black Friday last April 15, when the government body accused them of violating gambling laws when processing money transfers.
6356095 Canada Inc – who were formerly known as ExcapsaSoftware Inc – are the defendants, as are 10 unidentified workers with the company, and will now have the opportunity to individually respond to the charges while also explaining their views on the corruption outrage.
Ira Rubin Takes Plea Deal After Admitting Guilt
Black Friday never seems far from the news, with Ira Rubin pleading guilty, in a US District Court in New York, to conspiring to help the Cereus Network, Full Tilt and PokerStars process payments that infringe the UIGEA (The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006).
The poker payment processor has been in jail following his April arrest, along with 10 other men indicted that day, and took a plea deal that could see him serve 18 to two years for his crimes when he is sentenced in Manhattan in May.
The 53-year-old, who was detained in Guatemala near the end of April and then extradited to the USA, was accused of nine crimes, including helping the poker rooms deceive banks and disguise payments as online transactions with shell firms – which are companies that serve as a means to allow business transactions without having any noteworthy operations or assets.
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Taking a Licking
Article courtesy of www.onlinegamblingmagazine.com
The art of winning in poker requires seeing the bigger picture, even if you have to take a few hard hits.
To outwit opponents at the poker table, you need to get into the head of the typical gambler to see how he or she thinks and behaves, then deviate from those behaviours in your own actions. Of course, playing online, with players in a constant state of flux, the learning curve is much steeper since by the time any opposition comes to grips with what you’re doing, you already have most of their chips.
So how does a gambler pick up the pace to keep everything in check? We all keep score using the gaming session as a unit of progress or loss. And a losing poker player will realise that a shaky game plan isn’t going to help to get even for the session. To mix it up, he’ll stubbornly apply self sacrifice in the hope of creating big opportunities sticking to a game plan. In a fog, and on tilt, he’ll try to rationalise his behavior, which you can easily sniff out and exploit.
The usual advice for people seeing red is to hit the ejection button, but under such duress, you’re actually well positioned to make some money as the proverbial fists come raining down on you and your chip stack. Other players will obviously see you’re stuck and expect you to keep going headlong into despair by playing a lot of hands, raising on unsound values and bluffing left and right. Having that information about your opponents allows you to turn the tables by derailing their assumptions with unexpected tactics. Play solidly and don’t bluff. And if you can catch some hands, you might just impress yourself—as well as others—with your ability to come back from the brink.
Everyone sets their loss limits differently—if at all. If you’re a weak player prone to tilting, limit your losses conservatively. But if you’re an accomplished player who can control emotions, you’re overlooking a good situation from which to earn some money when you find yourself in a rut. Professional poker players generally don’t set limits on their losses, because they don’t want to pass on proven moneymaking situations that reveal themselves when they’re in the throes of losing big.
The Power of Leverage
In poker, leverage is the psychological seed you plant based on the implications of an early-round wager. If you run a bluff on the end, an opponent knows you’re not semi-bluffing with a draw––but he also knows he’ll get to see your hand if he calls. If you make a wager on any of the other three betting rounds, unless one of you goes all-in, the opponent has to consider how much more money the hand might cost him if he calls. There is of course some leverage at limit poker, but far more at no-limit, where the next barrel might be all your chips.
Leverage is responsible for most of the intimidation in no-limit hold ’em. The player who does a lot of betting and raising uses leverage to win a lot of pots with the worst hand. He also doesn’t need to jeopardise a lot of chips doing it if he uses leverage well.
There’s nothing in poker like having both a good hand and a strong arm. When your good hand turns to trash after the flop, your strong arm can still win the pot for you. So go put that leverage to work.
