Ultimate Bet Pros On Russ Hamilton Cheater
Written by Matt W | Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
This one is not fresh from the bakery. It somehow got left unnoticed with all the other hoop la going on. But it is important enough to be pulled out from the back of the shelf because it answers questions that everybody has been asking. A lot of people, poker players and bloggers included, want to hear from Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke, the brand ambassadors for Ultimate Bet, why they have stuck on with the online poker room despite the super user scandal. They have been asking what these two poker legends think about Russ Hamilton.
In March on the occasion of the 2009 NBC National Heads Up Poker Championship, Dave Farra of RawVegas.tv spoke candidly to Hellmuth and Annie about the Russ Hamilton affair. Farra was the person who tried to interview Russ Hamilton as the latter left a golf course, thereby reigniting a dying fire.
Annie was not uncomfortable at being questioned on this sensitive issue and in fact answered in a clear manner, which indicated that she had given great deal of thought to it. She acknowledged that Hamilton was a “jerk” and had done “those horrible things”. But Annie was equally clear that as of today the brand Ultimate Bet was clean.
She said that Ultimate Bet has a lot of “honest people working very hard and really believing in that product”. They were “good people who do not deserve to be taken down”. Therefore she made a considered choice to remain with Ultimate Bet. Annie said that she made the choice in the best interest of online poker because she believed that the industry needed a competitive brand like Ultimate Bet.
She told Farra that since she did not leave Ultimate Bet in the heat of things when she was facing a lot of flak there is no question of leaving now. She argued that if she was changing allegiance to the “other side” (meaning Full Tilt Poker) then she would have done it before her Celebrity Apprentice stint. There was no point in giving mileage to a site that she was about to leave. Finally she added that it would be Wicked Chops Poker that would be taking her out to dinner.
Hellmuth on the hand appeared very uncomfortable with the questions. His body language was undecided and he was groping for words. His pronouncement on Hamilton was “innocent till proven guilty beyond a shadow of doubt”. And since this was not the general view point, Hellmuth had avoided talking about this.
He was on firmer ground talking about Ultimate Bet. He said that it had emerged from the scandal much stronger and was in safe hands. He believed that the past was the past and he felt good about the site’s future. Hellmuth confided that late in 2008 he had renewed his contract with Ultimate Bet and would be with them for at least a couple of years.
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· Written by Matt W · Filed Under Poker Gossip · Comments Off
