Absolute & UltimateBet are they 4king Cereus ?

July 28, 2008

Absolute Poker & sister site UltimateBet announced they are to intergrate into one poker network to be called Cereus. Pronounced “serious” this would set them up to jointly become one of the biggest online poker networks rivalling Ongame network, ipoker network, FullTilt & PokerStars …. potentially the merging of their combined players would make the Cereus Poker Network the 3rd biggest player base online.

more … UltimateBet and Absolute Poker Merge to Form Cereus Network

Surely a good thing ?

They cannot be Cereus – UltimateBet & Absolute the two sites involved in security scandals and staff abuse of player accounts is now trying to “re-brand” as if nothing happened … and it’s not as if the situation at UB has even been resolved if anything it seems to keep resurfacing.

more … Kahnawake Releases Official Statement on UltimateBet & Absolute Poker

OK unless you’ve been playing online poker under a rock I’m pretty sure most regulars at any of the poker forums are aware of the Absolute Poker hole cards / super user account / potripper scandal.

Then no sooner had that one been “cleared up” with affected players being refunded, the gaming commission investigation, tightening of security at Absolute etc etc than it’s partner site UltimateBet (which ran off different software and wasn’t sharing the player base) runs into pretty much the same sh*t storm of evidence of NeoNeo and hole card issues using super user style accounts.

And within the last month just as the dust seemed to be settling, yet more issues of a similar nature happening at a similar time again seem to be surfacing at UB … when will it end ?

What’s their solution been so far ?

Pretty much drag their heels, eventually get things sorted out (in so far as following up things anyone else points out is wrong) and then carrying on like nothing happened … That’s until someone finds a couple more accounts which werent addressed and then it’s back to square one again.

Now the solution seems to be making themselves bigger so that players cant ignore them or will be less likely to move elsewhere.

Cereus is serious

With roughly double to player base combined they’ll probably be able to market themsleves to a whole load of poker players on size alone, especially to US poker players. After all the actual % of online poker players who are also active on the forums is probably % wise quite low, most players arent even going to have a clue that a few high stakes poker players got played a couple of years ago … and probably wont care either.

Where does 4kingpoker stand on all this ?

Anyway running a poker forum is a bit different … I at least want to feel I’m not leading our visitors and members to a duff site or recommending a site with known issues that consistently fails to address them.

I was done with promoting them a while ago when this first came out, added to a shambolic transition of affiliate tracking etc merging the two rooms into one affiliate backend which meant we were probably sending them players but never being able to get correct trackers and credited for our efforts.

After the gaming commission announcements that security had been sorted I thought give them another chance … Alot of people love the sites and the security if anything had seemed to be likely to be better than anywhere after getting their knuckles rapped and closing the loopholes.

So the advisory on our reviews of the Absolute Poker & UltimateBet sites was amended (to point out the issues but that they had also been addressed). While I wasn’t about to promote the hell out of them at least visitors had the choice and also some info that there was an issue (to make an informed choice).

But I think there comes a point where you cant keep giving second chances if only half the original problem gets addressed … So I’ve drawn a line – the reviews are still on 4kingpoker but we have no links to downlaod either site and won’t be collecting any commissions or referring new players etc.

To be honest this cerous poker network is a seriously good idea (in principle) … but to those players who are aware of the issues at the sites (that they just don’t seem to go away) and everytime they tell us it’s all been sorted it then turns out it hasn’t …

You just cant help thinking the marketing dept have decided the best approach is to make themselves as big as they can, united they will probably stand & divided they would probably fall.

I fully expect in due time every site & forum will be back to promoting them (the majority aren’t dropping them anyway) – but I for one am not going to be rushing to recommend them until we’ve had a decent period of zero drama and Cereus have proved they really are serious about taking care of their players … I truly hope they can turn over a new leaf, do it fast, do it 100% honestly & learn the lesson that is better to come clean, draw a line and genuinely start afresh.

Doubling their size could be double the good or double the bad … I guess only time will tell if they’re Absolutely Cereus about building a trustworthy operation or they end up becoming the UltimateBet to avoid.

Written by admin · Filed Under Scrawnybob's Ramble