Online poker site Ultimate Bet announced in press release issued this evening that Eric “Rizen” Lynch has joined their newly created Star Players team. As they describe it, positions on this team are limited to only the most respected players in online poker. He Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy who was signed with the company last week.
As we suggested in a past article, Ultimate Bet is obviously hoping associating themselves with the biggest names in online poker will help players forgive them for the insider cheating that took place on their website. Ultimate Bet recently admitted to a security leak where over a 20 month period high stakes players were cheated out of millions of dollars in cash by players who had worked for Ultimate Bet and could see their opponent’s hole cards. In a press release they referred to this as an ‘unfair advantage’ rather then cheating or steeling and attempted to direct blame at former employees who worked for the site prior to an ownership change,
It’s reasonable to suspect the Ultimate Bet’s press release regarding insider cheating, might contain elements of fiction or half truths. This is reasonable considering they are owned by the same company as Absolute Poker who was caught multiple times in lies during a cheating scandal of the same nature. While this company may or may not being telling the truth at least they did what they were legally and morally obligated to do and returned the money to players who were cheated. This is apparently enough for Eric “Rizen” Lynch and Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy to forgive them, so perhaps Ultimate Bet hopes it might be enough for others to forgive them as well.
“I’m extremely pleased to be a part of the new team at UltimateBet,” stated Lynch. “I’ve been playing on the online poker site for over four years now and have always enjoyed the fast software and the excellent structure that the tournaments offer.
Further evidence Ultimate Bet is trying to sell they have integrity: “We’re extremely impressed with Rizen’s talent both at the online poker tables and at land-based tournaments,” says Annie Duke, UltimateBet’s Cardroom Consultant. “But we’re most impressed with the integrity and strong values he shares with Josephy.”
Editor’s note: Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker are located the sovereign nation Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, in Canada which has no judges, prisons, extradition treaties or any real legal system. For this reason playing at the mentioned sites contains additional risk. We strongly encourage players to play only at rooms licensed in the European Union. If you’re a US player your options for medium sized rooms EU licensed poker sites is limited to DoylesRoom and only a few other options.
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