Travis Makar releases shocking Superuser audio file

<img src="http://www.liquidpoker.net/staff/Raidern/ultimatebetpokerscandal270.jpg" align="right" style="margin: 5px; border:1px solid black;">The Superuser scandal on Ultimate Bet is arguably one of the biggest scandals in the history of online poker. Some accounts had access - given by Ultimate Bet - to everyone else's hole cards. After a while high stakes players became suspicious of some accounts as they were very aggressive on the river, always raising or folding. The scandal was obviously a big hit to Ultimate Bet, whose traffic numbers dropped drastically although it remained active until it was finally taken down by the US Department of Justice in 2011.

It's all a few years old now, but Travis Makar, who used to work with UB as a programmer, released an audio file of a meeting that implicate people such as Russ Hamilton, a consultant for UB, and Greg Pierson, founder and CEO of Ultimate Bet and Iovation, a company that provides player verification for Ultimate Poker (Nevada online poker room). It starts out with Russ Hamilton admitting that he stole $16-$18 million from players by using a software that allowed him to see the opponents' hole cards, which was a feature called "God Mode". These audios were actually recorded by Russ Hamilton, who apparently wanted to cover himself. This is not the first time that Travis Makar 'leaks' files associated with the Superuser scandal. In 2011 he leaked an e-mail that suggested that other people than Hamilton had access to the God Mode.

People that were mentioned and were aware of the scandal:
Greg Pierson, founder and CEO of Ultimate Bet and Iovation
Dan Friedberg, former Ultimate Bet counsel
Jim Ryan, former CEO of Ultimate Bet and Party Gaming
Joe Norton, head of Tokwiro Enterprises which owned Absolute Poker and had recently acquired Ultimate Bet
Paul Leggett, who managed Cereus until Black Friday and is now head of the online division at Amaya Gaming

Beside countless p<A name="cutnews"></A>layers, quite a lot of well known people were victims of the God Mode accounts. Ben Affleck reportedly lost $500,000 to Hamilton and other people on the site. Prahlad Friedman was on the list of victims as he was cheated for $360,000. Several players lost over $100,000 as well.

In the meeting they discussed how the board should handle the scandal. People from both Ultimate Bet and Absolute poker were aware of it at the time of the meeting. they discussed what Ultimate Bet could do to cover up the thefts and minimize damages. One of the suggestions was to come up with a lie and blame it all on a consultant. They also considered to give up the Ultimate Bet brand while keeping the Absolute Poker name clean, but that was not a possibility as AP already had a cheating scandal of its own.

Hamilton goes through a list of players and talks about who he thinks should get a refund or not. He specificaly thinks that poker pro Freddie Deeb doesn't deserve any refund as he chip dumped enough money to him in the past.

Phil Hellmuth, a brand ambassador for UB back then, was mentioned in the audio. It seems he wasn't aware of it until the scandal came out. Annie Duke was also mentioned and she actually got to test the feature, but it was on a 15-min delay and she couldn't use it in the same manner as Hamilton and others.

The audio file is almost 3 hour long and can be found on youtube. You can read a more detailed report about it on LegalPokerSites.

I hope Hamilton and whoever else is just as guilty rots in prison.

"Annie Duke was also mentioned and she actually got to test the feature," - what the fuck, "feature"? you mean cheat/hack.
Phil Ivey was crushing FTP pre Pokerstars takeover, now not so much, just saying.

Filth.

On May 11 2013 10:26 TalentedTom wrote: "Annie Duke was also mentioned and she actually got to test the feature," - what the fuck, "feature"? you mean cheat/hack. Phil Ivey was crushing FTP pre Pokerstars takeover, now not so much, just saying.

Easier to play when it's not your money.

On May 11 2013 10:26 TalentedTom wrote: "Annie Duke was also mentioned and she actually got to test the feature," - what the fuck, "feature"? you mean cheat/hack. Phil Ivey was crushing FTP pre Pokerstars takeover, now not so much, just saying.

TT not loving ivey anymore
something MUST be wrong

On May 11 2013 14:23 HeRoS)eNGagE wrote: TT not loving ivey anymore something MUST be wrong

seriously wow

On May 11 2013 13:34 Stim_Abuser wrote: Show nested quote + On May 11 2013 10:26 TalentedTom wrote: "Annie Duke was also mentioned and she actually got to test the feature," - what the fuck, "feature"? you mean cheat/hack. Phil Ivey was crushing FTP pre Pokerstars takeover, now not so much, just saying.

On May 11 2013 13:10 NewbSaibot wrote: Show nested quote + On May 11 2013 10:26 TalentedTom wrote: "Annie Duke was also mentioned and she actually got to test the feature," - what the fuck, "feature"? you mean cheat/hack. Phil Ivey was crushing FTP pre Pokerstars takeover, now not so much, just saying. Easier to play when it's not your money.

Also easier to play when you can see people's wholecards, I wonder if FTP was this corrupt, very little would surprise me at this point. I'm not gonna complain however, this is a game we all choose to play, if you don't like it do something else.

I dont think Ivey would risk his career over a cheating scandal. Just not necessary when he knows he's confident enough to play 500/1000, just doesnt want to do it on his own dime.

What amazes me the most is that people who supposedly know how to play poker cheated like fucking morons, they could have done this for years without anybody noticing if only they had half a brain

I think they just severely underestimated the observational ability of their opponents and the tracking software available at the time.'

but ya, they fucked up bad

Wouldnt suprise me if Phil Ivey was cheating at all acctually

This business just been too shady and too many scandals

ivey's reputation is incomparable to duke's

Thou, Ivey did his hustling back then - quit if he was down 1-2 buyins, kept playing mostly if opponment was on tilt (i dont know this, but a lot of people said stuff like this about him). Only played if he was massivly +EV

If he was acctually cheating it would be hard to imagine he would bother about stuff like that

You guys need to stop talking about Ivey and start talking about Hellmuth. He had a 10 big bets per 100 winrate on UB, according to PTR, while most of us don't believe he is a winning player at high stakes online. Then this hand happened where he gets shipped the pot with the worst hand. A billion hands were played on UB and the one time (as far as I know) where such a bug happened was when Hellmuth was involved in the hand. With or without (lol) Hellmuth knowing about it, his account was rigged.

Schneids made a post where he said Hellmuth randomly tried to get a bunch of guys in AbsolutePoker highstakes games to come play him HU on UB, and the play was somewhat suspicious.

He said he thought it more likely that someone was on Phil's account or that it was just variance, than him cheating tho. It's pretty early in the 2p2 thread about this.

Big article in norwegian media today about Phil Ivey accused of cheating in "punto banco" at casino in London

http://www.dagbladet.no/2013/05/12/sport/poker/phil_ivey/casino/27133891/http://www.dagbladet.no/2013/05/12/sport/poker/phil_ivey/casino/27133891/

nvm