Paul Leggett, the chief executive officer of the online poker company Tokwiro Enterprises, announced that his company was canceling their plans for this year’s event on the island of Aruba. The popular poker site Ultimate Bet, purchased by Tokwiro in 2008, had been sponsoring the tournament since 2002. In a press release, Leggett stated that the company, which also owns Absolute Poker, would focus on offering its online players more rewards.
The new plans for Ultimate Bet (now known as UB.com) include offering higher guaranteed prize pools for their online tournaments on par with the two leading US-friendly online poker sites, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. According to Leggett’s statement, the site will eventually create a monthly tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of US$500,000, as well as a UB Online Championship tournament for the site’s top players.
Both UB.com and Absolute Poker suffered from cheating scandals in 2007. Former WSOP Main Event champion Russ Hamilton was implicated in a cheating scheme on UB.com for using a "superuser" account to look at other players’ hole cards. At around the same time, a former employee of Absolute Poker hacked into the site and used his access to view his opponents’ cards. The sites refunded millions of dollars to the affected players.
UB.com sponsors some of the top players in the world, including eleven-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth. Annie Duke, another notable UB.com player, recently won the National Heads-up Poker Championship in Las Vegas. Veteran poker pro Joe Sebok, son of poker legend Barry Greenstein, signed an endorsement agreement with UB.com late last year.
From 2002 to 2005, the final table was televised on the World Poker Tour shows. Juha Hellpi of Finland defeated top pro and poker author Phil Gordon to take the first title. Other winners of this event include Erick Lindgren, Eric Brenes, and Freddy Deeb.
