After an intro featuring host of The Soup and star of CommunityJoel McHale (who is joined by a still wearing way too much clothing Laura Lane) ESPN’s Inside Deal welcomes Joe Sebok to its studio to talk about his signing with UltimateBet.
Embattled online poker site UltimateBet hopes Joe Sebok (above) will bolster its reputation among online players.
In what has to be the smartest move it’s made in a long time, UltimateBet has inked a multi-year sponsorship deal with poker pro Joe Sebok.
Sebok announced the signing on his blog. Go after the jump (click here) for a follow-up interview we did with him on the signing.
For many, the stench of the Russ Hamilton super-user scandal won’t leave UltimateBet for some time and for good reason. But in our view, signing Sebok is one of the best, if not the best, free-agent signing UB could’ve made.
Sebok is a Berkeley grad with an old dot-com and business pedigree, he has tons of respect among his peers and poker fans as president of PokerRoad.com and he has a massive following on Twitter (approaching 550,000 followers). If he is really going to be involved in the business operations of the company, he can add a lot more value to the brand than if UB signing some random Euro flavor of the week online superstar or the fourth place finisher at the WSOP Main Event.
We still think there are a few ugly names and deceptions that will pop up from the super-user scandal. If Sebok can bring them to light, UB may be able to gain back at least some of the credibility it has lost in the community.
Go after the jump for a full Q&A we did with Seebs on his signing. Definitely worth the read.
Whether or not UltimateBet has any staying power in sponsoring major MMA fighters/events after this month remains to be seen (we say "no,"), however, Bluff Magazineis reportingthat they did just finish a deal to patch up Chuck Liddell for UFC 97.
Liddell wore Poker Stars at the 2008 WSOP Main Event and is one of the few fighters not to have a big Full Tilt sticker on his ass during a fight in recent months.
Unlike Full Tilt Poker, who slapped patches on just about every fighter in the octagon, UltimateBet seems to be taking a cheaper more targeted approach.
Tilt may still end up as a UFC sponsor after this month though, as UB has nothing guaranteed past 97. And Bluff notes they are still carrying on promotions:
"Full Tilt has been running a series of freerolls for Canadian players that would see them travel by train with Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren and Gavin Smith to see UFC 97. Given the relatively quick notice it is unlikely that Full Tilt would cancel their promotion."
The UFC appears to be turning its back on Full Tilt Poker.
For the MMA fans out there: if you follow the UFC, you've probably noticed Full Tilt Poker logos and patches increasingly taking over the octagon.
Looks like that's coming to an end, at least for a little while.
The UFC today informed some of its business associates (and fighter managers) that Full Tilt Poker is banned from appearing on fighter's trunks, corners, or in the octagon itself.
With the amount of money FTP was dumping into the UFC, some other company had to be taking its place, right? The UFC had to get some sort of a better offer, you'd think.
About halfway through the interview, Gary describes how RawVegas.tv "very rudely" intruded on Layne and Russ' "private time" (because, you know, allegedly stealing at least $6 million from your friends and then going AWOL isn't even remotely rude). Layne says that when he saw the cameras, he "knew that wasn't a spot for me to be in."
Layne also said that he knows "for a fact that Russ Hamilton's lawyer said 'don't say a word.'"
Now the one thing we always felt Layne was unfairly skewered for in that video was that he may have just been golfing with Russ because he's a gambler and saw an edge he could exploit. Makes sense. Pretty common. Layne says that that's a "fair" assessment of why he was with Russ that day. Not that we were expecting him to say something else though.
But then Layne completely discredits himself by saying, "If [Russ] took all of this money…how can one man do this without being caught?" to which Gary said, "That totally makes sense."
Yeah, kind of hard to believe how Russ could get away with something like that with a company that he started and was integral in developing the software for…inconceivable.
Let's kick off the first of our NBC National Heads Up Poker Championship red carpet coverage with Phil Hellmuth. We weren't planning on "going there" regarding asking about Russ Hamilton and the UltimateBet cheating scandal, but after mentioning golfing with Layne Flack for a Golf Magazine story, well, it kind of opened the door…
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