The name Russ Hamilton remains one of the most infamous in the poker world even two decades after the “Ultimate Bet Scandal,” which was first revealed in 2007.
Ever since the inception of online poker, there had been some paranoia about the game being rigged, with many players believing there is simply no way to trust a poker game being played on computers and over the internet.
These fears became a reality at Ultimate Bet, one of the biggest online poker sites in the world at the time, as online poker forums revealed what seemed to be a deep conspiracy to defraud the players.
It took time and effort to reveal the true depth of it all, but the eventual results were truly shocking. The 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Russ Hamilton, who was serving as a consultant at Ultimate Bet, had “god mode” access at the site all along.
In case you forgot how the biggest cheating scandal in poker ever happened, or weren’t even around back when it did, this is the cautionary tale of the Ultimate Bet scandal, an event that shook the very foundations of the poker world.
Potripper’s Tournament Results Blow the Lid
The first whiff of cheating started at Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet’s sister site, which was a part of the same Cereus Poker Network in 2007.
A player under the handle “Potripper” won a $1,000 buy-in tournament playing a style of poker that had his opponents questioning everything.
The win was “only” worth $30,000, but some players on TwoPlusTwo forums, which were huge at the time, started questioning the validity of Potripper’s play.
One player requested hand histories from the tournament, and the site ended up sending him master files that had all hole cards, player and observer account IPs, and more.
It was this history file that blew the lid on the entire case. A single observer account could be seen following Potripper from one table to another, all the way to his eventual victory. The account’s IP was in Costa Rica, the same country where Absolute Poker was registered.
The internet understood what was happening right away, but Absolute Poker denied any allegations of wrongdoing.
Yet, once the Kahnawake Gaming Commission got involved, things became a lot clearer. Seven accounts in total had stolen $1.6 million from players through cheating that probably involved a “superuser” seeing player hole cards.
The Corruption Went a Lot Deeper
Things settled down slightly after $1.6 million was returned to the players from the Potripper scandal, but it got everyone’s attention, and the poker community was on the lookout for cheaters.
They found one in an account by the name of “NioNio” on Ultimate Bet not too long after, as the players seemed to be crushing high-stakes cash games for unprecedented win rates.
Two Plus Two forums got to work once again, and it was soon clear that NioNio had been cheating. With the Potripper scandal still fresh in everyone’s memory, Ultimate Bet was asked to come clean.
In May 2008, the operator finally did admit that some cheating had been happening over the course of 2006 and 2007, but a Kahnawake Gaming Commission investigation once again revealed a much deeper issue.
The cheating had dated back to 2004, with 23 accounts implicated, and a reported $22 million in player funds stolen over the period.
The number was shocking for online poker at the time, as no single player had come anywhere close to winning so much money through fair play.
Poker superstars like Mike Mattusow, Tom Dwan, and Brad Booth were among the damaged parties, and Ultimate Bet got to paying the players back for their losses.
Yet, the full extent of the losses was hard to compensate for, and it’s likely that many players never got paid in full. The question in everyone’s mind now was: who was doing the cheating?
WSOP Champion Was the Culprit
A Kahnawake Gaming Commission report from late 2008 was what really shook the poker world, as it was revealed that the 1994 WSOP Main Event champion Russ Hamilton was the person behind the cheating across the Cereus Poker Network.
The player, who had been hired as a consultant for Ultimate Bet, had superuser access across the network, which meant he could see player hole cards in real time.
According to the report, Russ used this privilege to track players, revealing the hole cards to his co-conspirators, and winning millions of dollars in the process.
Hamilton had betrayed the game and gotten involved in high-level cheating, but he had done it all from Costa Rica. He was instantly shunned by the poker community, but it was clear that, for all intents and purposes, he would get away with it.
The affected poker players had not way to get compensation from Russ directly, and the best they could hope for was a partial refund from Ultimate Bet.
Duke and Hellmuth Caught Up in the Scandal
Two other big-name poker players, whom Hamilton had brought to work with Ultimate Bet as brand ambassadors, were also partially on the hook.
Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke were both huge names at the time, and their morals were now being brought into question as well.
Duke, in particular, was implicated in the scandal, as tapes revealed in 2013 revealed conversations between Hamilton and his lawyers, where he claimed Annie had known about the superuser functionality.
Hellmuth’s reputation was tarnished as well, but not beyond repair, as there was no clear indication that the player knew about any cheating or even the ability to cheat through superuser accounts.
Yet, this scandal was a big heads-up to all the professional poker players looking to work as online poker ambassadors, warning them not to work with just any poker brand out there.
Ever since the Ultimate Bet scandal, poker ambassadors have had to take more responsibility for the operators’ actions, although there have been more situations in which online poker sites disappointed the public, and the ambassadors simply claimed to know nothing about it.
Annie Duke’s reputation took a huge hit for her involvement in the Ultimate Bet scandal, and it didn’t help that her brother, Howard Lederer, ended up being involved in the Full Tilt Poker scandal just a few years later.
The period from 2005 to 2015 was filled with shady dealings in online poker, and revelations like these built up a poker community that’s more resilient and aware of potential cheating than ever before.
Cheating attempts like those by Potripper or NioNio are revealed within days in modern poker, as players are more vigilant than ever, and loopholes have been closed to ensure online poker is a safer space for everyone involved.
