All, We did this a while back, maybe we can start it up again. Anyone in on a weekly Poker Tourney (private invite)? Sidekick
FUnding Play "Difficult to "fund" the sites, unless we're playing for free or IOU's." Yeah, that's why I play on UB, put money on there before the UIGEA went into effect. Haven't wanted to hassle the problem of funding other sites, especially since they don't offer bj tournaments. But PocketFives and 2+2 forums have frequent postings on which funding methods work for the different sites, or, I would think that if you called a site's support number, they could guide you as to how to fund. I would think members of this site would tend to have UB accounts, as the other poker sites don't offer bj tournaments.
R Kuczek Yeah I know, or remember you haven't had to re-fund UB since your initial deposit. I often did. But, when the UB controversy hit right after the law, I pulled my funds. There's no "shame on me. shame on you." in my gambling world. Stung once is enough.
How can anyone trust UB nothings really changed there since Russ and the rest were caught cheating all that happened is that Russ took the heat and covered for the rest. Then they said it was sold with no proof of who owns it now.
Ub Kind of gave up waiting for some kind of resolution. Never heard anything. Respect Cerritos, but MAN! Too many SCAMS out there. History is a bitch!
Certainly can understand the concerns about UB My approach to online play was to make a very small deposit, then play the bottom feeder SnGs, etc to gradually build up a bankroll; then move up based on bankroll, being very conservative and always playing well within my bankroll, so I could absorb losing streaks. That's worked pretty well, I have been able to cash out a lot more than I ever deposited. While I would hate to lose what I have in my UB account now, even if I lost it all tomorrow, I would still have a very nice profit/ROI on my original investment. So my continuing to play on UB is kind of a 'no lose' situation. While individuals at UB were caught cheating, the issue of the sites sytematically cheating players has never been adequately addressed, not at UB and not at other sites. "Start Your Own Casino" actually advertised casino software that would allow the casino operator to 'adjust the RNG' to set their profit margin at whatever level they desired, guaranteed that you 'wouldn't wake up finding you owed a player $20,000', and that you could 'take money back from players who won too much'. I don't think any online site can be trusted. Also the issue that cheating may have occurred in UB blackjack tournaments has not even been looked into. Remember that Russ won a trip to a UBT bj tournament in St. Kitts, by playing in a UB online bj tournament. Talk about an awesome conflict of interest, at least. Maybe he could see the dealer's hole card? Other player's down cards? But what we are talking about here would be a private tournament, restricted to BJT.com members, by invite. We would be playing against each other, and any play outside of that would be up to the individual player. Also, would assume would be for moderate stakes? So cheating not likely to be an issue, unless you suspect some bjt members of having that capability and intent. But I would be willing to find a way to deposit to another site for this, have been seriously thinking of setting up a pokerstars or fulltilt account anyway, so I could do more poker.
Comment on Private Tournaments On UB, a "Captain" needs to set up a private tournament group. He is then responsible for screening membership requests and scheduling the tournaments. All private tournaments are one-table tournaments, limited to the first nine players to sign up. You must be a member of the private tournament group to sign up. To join a private tournament group, and, I believe, to play in a private tournament after joining, you must have, at least, a current "Contender" status in the Raise program. That requires that you earn 500 Raise points each month. You get one Raise point for every $0.30 of rake paid for tournament and SnG play, including both poker and bjt. So, would need to pay $150 in rake each month to be active within a private tournament group, meaning, since rake on BJT and low level poker tournaments is 10%, run at least $1,500 in buy-ins each month. Also can earn Raise points for cash game and regular BJ play, of course, depending on cash game rake or amount gambled. That set up wouldn't work very well for people not actively playing on UB, as they wouldn't have enough Raise points to join a private tournament group.
More Comment Just checked, and one can do private tournaments on both PokerStars and Fulltilt. Evidently you need to email support at FT when you want a private tournament, while on PS you can have your account authorized to initiate a private tournament.
Even BJ cheating was done on UB and nothing with UB has changed. This weekend marks the third installment of the Ultimate Blackjack Tour on CBS, airing this Saturday at 2 p.m. (ET). Featuring some of poker's hottest players, the television series appears to have found an audience on the national network and is building momentum as the season rolls on. This weekend's episode features professional poker players, Erica "The Poker Princess" Schoenberg and David "The Devilfish" Ulliott, as well as blackjack wizards Willard DuBois, Lupe Sherman, Fred David, and the "Chicago Dawg," Tyrone Jackson. The lone Internet qualifier for Saturday's match is Ron Saccavino, who won his seat by playing Elimination Blackjack on PlayUBT.com. And from a poker tourney: FlipFlop2 (1st place finisher) is the account that belonged to Ron Saccavino, and Dannyboy55 (2nd place finisher) is the account that belonged to Dennis Novinskey, both confirmed on the 31 names released by UB as superusers. They both won seats to Aruba in this tournament and were there in person.
As I said I don't think that cheating in the BJTs has been addressed. That UBT episode you cited was from 2006, so before the cheating scandal broke, actually. But why didn't the KGC look into the BJ side of it? You have an identified superuser and Russ winning seats in UBT tournaments, and they didn't find this interesting, or worthy of investigation? Obvious need for meaningful national/international regulation of online gambling. I hate the idea of playing at "Harrah's.com, the Denny's of online gaming", but, better than unregulated sites.
The KGC and the other online gaming commissions are a complete joke, they never caught anyone (UB, AP, Cake Poker or any site) other players discovered the cheating, never prosecuted anyone (KGC could have since it is on an Indian reservation), never disclosed who all the owners are or even who all was involved in the cheating (in the case of UB/AP the list of 31 superuser accounts was released by the site and who knows who they might have left out), never pulled a license only fined them and did not require sites to pay the depositors (Poker Spot, Microgaming and others) when they shut down.
