Big news today as Caesars Entertainment (CZR: Nasdaq) IPO’d. The stocked opened trading on Wednesday at $9 per share and closed up 71% at closing price of $15.39. Good news for some for...
In a recent interview with Gaming Intelligence, Laurent Tapie said that he hopes to have a re-branded Full Tilt Poker launched by March 1. Ok then. There’s a better chance of Layne Flack repaying his debt...
Overlooked fall-out from Black Friday: no more Joanna Krupa on the NAPT.
Today is the five month mark since Why’s-It-Gotta-Be-Black Friday.
Crazy–just five months ago, even with a myriad of payment processing issues– Full Tilt Poker and UltimateBet were unbelievably profitable entities. Now, gone.
With that in mind, here’s a look at the top 10 poker sites (by active players) in the world today.
Just outside the Top 10 are U.S.-facing sites Merge (12th – 1,080 active weekly average), Bodog (13th – 1,000 active weekly average), and Cake (18th – 730 active weekly average).
Looking back at the week that was 4/15–Merge was already experiencing a massive year-over-year surge (up 333%) as was 888 (58%).
Cake Poker (down 69% the week of 4/11 year-over-year) and PartyPoker (down 22%) were getting kicked in the nuts. But they’ve both seen obvious gains since 4/15 with the top losers being (obviously) Full Tilt (down 100%) and UB (down 97%).
All right, so it may not be all smiles in the offices in Costa Rica, but it's not bankruptcy yet either.
Interesting press release just dropped from AP/UB.
In it, the company announced its plans to structure and focus its business efforts outside of the U.S. It all addresses rumors about the company filing bankruptcy, which it claims is inaccurate.
For player cash-outs, the release says:
For non-U.S. players, Absolute Poker and UB have increased their maximum withdrawal limits to $1000 for Visa withdrawals and $500 for all other methods. The number of transactions being processed per day has been significantly increased as well. Players are still restricted to one transaction per week, but we are working to return non-U.S. withdrawals to normal service levels as quickly as possible.
If all of the above is true, and the company continues to (albeit very, very, veeeeerrrrryy slowly) work to get U.S. players their cash back, they may end up in a better spot than Full Tilt, who are rumored to be in a world of hurt right now.
Will be interesting to follow.
Read the AP/UB statement in full here. For a really intriguing breakdown of the AP/UB situation, read ElevenGrover’s 2+2 entry here.
Finalizing a deal in the works for months, Blanca Games (who have to be happier than Andrew in the above vid today) appears to have completed its deal with former UltimateBet owners Excapsa Software.
From our perspective, the key part of this document is point #1, in which it states that “Blanca will acquire interest in the debt and related security for a total payment of US 2 million…”
Why is this key to us? Because the total amount was really $116M. So if we’re reading this right, the Excapsa owners (Greg Pierson, Jon Karl, Russ Hamilton and all) were willing to forfeit about $114M to have the shitstorm they created with the super-user scandal simply go away.
Anyway. with the Hellmuth rumblings and now this, it looks like change is a coming at Ub in the near future.
Ittttttttttt's Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime! (for Phil Hellmuth and Ub to part ways?)
More and more chatter is circulating the so-called “Internet” about whether or not Phil Hellmuth is leaving Ub.
Hellmuth has been spotted recently at a number of events (and in his own Tweets) not wearing his Ub cap or logo.
This has led to speculation that Hellmuth is leaving the only online poker site he’s ever been with. BJ Nemeth wrote that Hellmuth and WSOP.com would be a natural fit. And 2+2 is a good 13 pages deep on thoughts about the lack of logo love.
When asked for comment, Hellmuth says:
“I can’t discuss my agreement with Ub due to confidentiality reasons, so I’m leaving it up to my agent.”
Hellmuth is represented by Brian Balsbaugh at Poker Royalty.
Whether or not Hellmuth and Ub part ways remains to be seen, but usually where there’s smoke, there’s fireTM, so we’ll see how this plays out.
Hot poker playing girls have always been a commodity to online poker sites. Especially when they’re good. And it doesn’t hurt if they can sing like a delicate siren and speak Mandarin as well.
So it shouldn’t come as much of a shocker that Maria Ho, a woman, finally got an endorsement deal, as sources tell us that UB will announce her signing sometime later today.
Like the signing of Joe Sebok a little more than a year ago, this is a solid move for UB, which is still facing fallout from the UltimateBet super-user scandal. Fortunately for Maria, she won’t be as much of a public punching bag either. Ho is one of the more respected, well-liked female poker players on the tournament circuit and has had a great past few months, including but certainly not limited to a final table appearance at WSOP-C South Africa, a 10th place finish at WPT Bellagio Cup VI and a 11th place finish in the 2010 WSOP $10k Limit Hold’em World Championship this summer.
With the signing of Ho, and the semi-recent inking of Adam “Roothlus” Levy, Eric Baldwin, and Brandon Cantu, it certainly looks like UB is moving towards a younger core of players. Now if they can only explain who the hell this guy and this guy are (creepy team UB uncles?), they might just have a coherent marketing strategy for once.
UPDATE: UB has finally announced Maria Ho’s signing. Official press release after the jump . . .
Just getting Part II of our podcast up. No poker here. 100% discussing and debating The Walking Dead. We’re joined by an esteemed panel, including Jason Newitt, Dave “F-Train” Behr, Jeff Holsey, and Entities Chops and Colin. If you were a fan of the show, you’ll like the debate. We discuss problems with the show, [...]
We recorded a two-parter podcast yesterday. Part I is now live and discusses The Rise and Fall of Ray Bitar WCi feature with its author, Dave “F-Train” Behr. In it, F-Train details the interview process for the feature, as well some conclusions that could be drawn about the man who helped make Full Tilt Poker the [...]
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