Eric \”Rizen\” Lynch announced yesterday on his blog that he is no longer associated with the UltimateBet brand.
He chose not to release any details:
After a lot of reflection and thought, I have decided to separate myself from the Ultimate Bet brand. I hope that everyone will respect my privacy, as I wish to not go into the decision in any great detail at this time. At this point in time I just believe that the things I\’m trying to accomplish in my career are not in sync with the Ultimate Bet brand.
There are many interesting levels to this. Eric chose to sign on with UB as the online poker site just barely came clean about its superuser cheating scandal, and it came just after Cliff \”JohnnyBax\” Josephy signed a deal with UB. Evidently, Eric took a lot of crap from the forums for his decision, and whether that had anything to do with his withdrawal from the sponsorship remains to be told. But whatever made him end the deal must have been of a significant nature because he did it even before the main event of the WSOP.
Oh, and for those who thought the UB statement concluded the superuser scandal, it is by no means concluded. UB was careful to send out their statement of resolution the day before the WSOP began this summer, but what was not widely reported was another statement posted on the website less than a week later. It quietly notes that their oh-so-thorough investigation that took many months was not so thorough and numerous accounts involved in the scandal may have been missed.
Click below for the hush-hush sweep-it-under-the-rug release:
June 5, 2008 – As announced previously, UltimateBet began the process of issuing refunds to affected players on May 29, 2008. Since then, we have continued to investigate additional accounts and data surrounding the unfair play. We have also received inquiries from our customers for a few accounts that we have included in our investigation.
We are confident that we have uncovered the majority of the usernames involved in the fraud and processed the corresponding refunds. However, we are currently analyzing data for additional usernames that appear to have suspicious activity. If we determine that these usernames were in fact part of the scheme, we will refund the net losses incurred by any customers who played against them.
We expect to have the investigation concluded by June 30, 2008.