Phil Hellmuth at the Center of Another Ultimate Bet Scandal

2008 has been a tough year for Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet.  The company has been at the center of an internal cheating scandal that made the pages of the Washington Post and the airwaves on 60 Minutes.  The group has reimbursed anyone who was affected by the cheating which was allegedly manufactured by World Series of Poker winner, Russ Hamilton.  
 
The past two weeks hasn’t been any easier on Tokwiro Enterprises, owner of the Cereus Network, as they have come under fire once again.  The company’s spokesperson, poker pro Phil Hellmuth, is the focus of the controversy when it was discovered that he was winning money via a losing hand.  It appears that Cereus rushed the debut of its software and Hellmuth’s win was attributed to a glitch in the software. 
 
A statement was issued by Paul Leggett, Tokwiro’s Chief Operations Officer stating, “On Saturday, December 20, 2008, two players DOUBLEBALLER and PHILHELLMUTH were playing heads up at a 200/400 table on UltimateBet.com.  DOUBLEBALLER won hand #1162170993.  The software malfunctioned and awarded the losing player PHILHELLMUTH the pot, instead of the actual winner DOUBLEBALLER.  After learning of the incident, we credited the player the correct prize to his account.  We then began an investigation into the malfunction.  We have now completed our preliminary investigation into the software malfunction regarding an incorrect payout in hand #1162170993 on the CEREUS Poker Network. We have concluded that the malfunction occurred because the winning player disconnected from the table at the precise millisecond when the software was awarding the pot, in conjunction with the “player’s state” data being cleared from the memory cache.  There is a prevention system in place designed to protect hand results against disconnections.  However, after conducting an extensive source code analysis, we found logic in our code that we have enhanced to further ensure this malfunction cannot reoccur.”
 
Phil Hellmuth in discussing the incident stated, “The only time in my life where I’ve had one pair beat three of a kind is when I made a big bluff in a poker tournament and now because of a software malfunction in online poker.  I am one of the most watched players on the Internet, and all I can say is that it is pretty obvious that there was no malicious intent and even more obvious that UB handled this problem well.  Sometimes these things happen on the Internet.  The important thing here is that I continue to have a ton of trust in UB’s software and new management team.”
 
Phil may have confidence in Ultimate Bet and its software but no one would blame players for feeling otherwise.