Poker Perambulation

Sir Waffles gently chided me – well, for Waffles very, very gently. He was parroting common opinion about Ultimate Bet. I have no argument against his accuracy or castigation. The end result being an admonishment for playing there.

So, what could be my possible defense? OK, it is the softest site I can find and I’m quite profitable. It was the second site I ever played on and was profitable from the start. It was and remains soft. I’m still winning tournaments and ring games there.

But, I’ll set that aside. I’ll ask a question. Is the site that different from the others? Well, their forced admission of wide spread cheating certainly is different. Quite indisputable in fact. But lets go beyond that and try to resolve what we owe sites and how they might reciprocate.

If you follow Bill Rini – a former insider managing an online room – he’s not very generous with his industry compliments. To paraphrase, they don’t understand their customer base and reward most those who deserve rewards least.

Let’s look at ownership. Grand Chief Joe was an iron worker – a dangerous but decent paying trade. He helped start the server service on their reservation and a few years later was purported to pay multiple millions for UB. That a quick, if suspicious, rise in net worth.

Little is known about the ownership of any number of sites. Certainly Russ Hamilton’s name was never bantered about a lot. Full Tilt has been sued so there is more info there. The ownership isn’t that far removed from Grand Chief Joe’s rise. What can we say about all this? It appears more luck than skill. And, you’ll have a hard time finding owners deserving of Man of the Year honors.  At FT it is more about cutout corporations to insulate and confuse.

Support isn’t going to earn any of the sites kudos. I’ve had issues that were poorly resolved in my estimation on every one I’ve ever played on. Horror stories abound.

The stupid upgrade I mentioned in the last post was resolved easily this time. But I’ll agree that is mostly luck.

We are pleased to inform you that we have credited your account with
$3.30 Tourney Dollars as a refund.
Let us inform you that some tournaments are currently experiencing i
nconveniences with the "Raise" option. However, the issue has been
already reported to our developers and they are working hard on fix
the issue as soon as possible.
Our team apologizes for any inconvenience this may caused. Please
do not hesitate to contact us again at any time  if there is anything
we can help you with.
Kind regards,
Jeff
UB – Tech Support

It isn’t the best possible wording but they promptly issued an acceptable resolution.

It is the rake that provides whatever tolerance sites extend to us. It runs as high as 20%. For that you get little more than a place to play. Even Harrah’s rewards program offers more. There is rakeback available on a number of sites although Rini cautions that the sites are trying to kill or cripple those programs. UB is among the better ones in giving 30% rakeback to those smart enough to register for that.

So, you’re right, Waffles. UB doesn’t deserve my play. But, neither can we say that there is a site out there that does. Besides that, its tournaments often carry substantial overlay. You won’t find that on FT or PS.

Related posts:

1. Waffling