Is UB Rigged? Game Fairness Overview

In 2003, Saddam Hussein sent one of his sons to the Central Bank of Iraq with a handwritten note demanding just under one billion dollars in US currency. During the later part of 1987, a lone gunman robbed the Knightsbridge Security Deposit in England for over $111 million dollars. In 1990, the Boston Museum in the US had over 200 million dollars worth of priceless art stolen by a group of criminals who were posing as police officers.

What does all of this have to do with UB and fairness, you ask? In 2004, a former employee the poker website Ultimate Bet discovered a way to hack into the system and force it to reveal the opposing player’s hole cards. This criminal was not discovered until 2006, at which time he had already stolen well over $25 million dollars while using hundreds of different user accounts. The story made global headlines as the biggest internet crime to ever take place, and it has literally changed the way that businesses conduct their daily activities in cyberspace.

The thing that all four of these cases have in common is simple; criminals found a way to beat the security of a business. In the cases of the Central Bank of Iraq and the Knightsbridge Security Deposit, they are still thriving with a larger customer base than when the crimes originally occurred. The Boston Museum still holds some of the world’s most valuable pieces of art, and these displays are visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. Ultimate Bet is still online with millions of users playing poker through the website each week, yet the media for some reason can not seem to let this last example go.

In reality, UB was the sole victim of this crime. While the players that were conned by the hackers surely felt months of frustration and anger when they suspected that someone was cheating the system, 100% of their money was refunded by Ultimate Bet. In fact, UB launched the largest review of any website in the history of the internet to ensure that each and every instance of cheating was discovered, and because the crime was so ingenious they called in some of the world’s leading security experts to obtain an explanation.

Nobody could fathom how this ex-employee had pulled off the crime of the century, but since UB had solid evidence they extended a one-time offer. They basically said, “Show us how you hacked into the system and we will not press charges.” The public did not like the idea of setting a criminal of this magnitude free for one second, but Ultimate Bet was much more concerned about protecting their players than they were about getting a conviction in court.

So here we are several years later, with thousands of people still claiming that UB and their bonus code is an outright scam. Many refuse to accept for a single minute that this wasn’t some grand conspiracy of the casino to steal money from players, but the part that they are failing to realize is that UB voluntarily started making refunds and hunting down the criminal. Besides a handful of angry players that were posting blogs around the internet, there was absolutely not a single piece of evidence to point out that a crime had even been committed. In fact, UB could have just as easily had those players arrested for slander and not paid out a single penny, but they chose to take the higher road while attempting to do what was right.

Ultimate Bet is currently one of the most secure websites on the internet. Notice that we didn’t say, “…one of the most secure casinos;” because their protocols easily rival what is in place on government websites and financial institutions. While there is probably no longer such a thing as an “unhackable” website, it is not likely that criminals would try to topple UB again since there are thousands of others out there in cyberspace with much more relaxed security in place.

So let’s revisit the original question; is UB rigged?

In the history of online casinos and poker rooms, Ultimate Bet is the only one to ever admit that there was potentially a problem with cheaters on their website. There have been hundreds of accusations over the years about many of the poker rooms out there in cyberspace yet none of them have performed a single inquiry on behalf of their customers.

In fact, I have personally witnessed what other players have alleged on a competitor’s website; the person playing against me made foolish bets, yet time after time he ended up winning. Whenever I had the “nuts”, which is a term for the best possible hand, the opposing player folded…even when I checked. The cheating was so blatantly obvious that I contacted customer service on the spot and logged out of the client; to this day I have never received a reply.

So if you’re still wondering if UB is rigged, hopefully the facts speak for themselves. It would have been very easy for Team UB to pretend like nothing ever happened and ignore the requests of players to review previous hands, but that’s not what they did. When all was said and done, UB paid out over $25 million dollars of their own money to make right what a criminal stole from the website’s patrons. Since no other casino has ever come even close to taking that type of action on behalf of their players (online or otherwise), I personally believe that they are the most legitimate casino in the world.

My opinion is not alone, however, because UB is still the website of preference of more professional players than all the other poker rooms in the world combined. Many of the pots in these elite games can reach five and six figures frequently, which should speak for UB’s credibility more than anything that has been reported by the media. If players like Phil Hellmuth and Anne Duke are comfortable betting $50,000 on a single hand, then I feel perfectly safe placing $100 wagers and so should you.