Today I’m blogging about a Notice of Civil Claim against Cake Poker. You can see it here. The claim was filed last week with the Supreme Court of British Columbia in New Westminster (a suburb of Vancouver). I found out about this claim on www.calvinayre.com.

I’ll make full disclosure up front: I have acted for a party that, in the past, had interests adverse to Cake. I have not acted for anyone involved with, and I have nothing to do with, this lawsuit.

Who’s suing whom and why? Two individuals, Ryan Bennett and Francois Piette, and their partnership and a corporation controlled by them are seeking damages from a number of parties apparently associated with Cake. These parties include Cake Poker (Canada) Inc. and certain of its alleged affiliates (including Cake Gaming N.V. and Yummy Interactive (Canada) Inc.). Also named as individual defendants are Nicholaos Mellios, Christopher Ruck, and Ian Winter, who purportedly own a “substantial interest” in the Cake Gaming network and are collectively alleged to be “responsible for all major decisions regarding” the network. Finally, some other individuals said to be direct or indirect shareholders in the network were added as defendants.

The basic claim is that, in 2001, Bennett and Piette formulated “an advanced business [and] marketing model” unlike any other model then being used by an Internet poker site. This initiative by Bennett and Piette is called the “Legacy Project” in the statement of claim. Apparently, “[t]he Legacy Project included a network marketing component whereby customers/players are compensated for referring other customers/players to the Legacy Project and who then receive a portion of the referred customers’/players’ winnings. It also proposed using photo real images on the website. These were then unique ways to obtain and retain customers/players.” So: the plaintiffs claim that they invented what is essentially an affiliate model for Internet poker.

More…

In light of what happened over a year ago at Ultimate Bet, where Phil Hellmuth won a pot he wasn’t entitled to, a similar issue popped up on Cake Poker earlier this afternoon. Per usual, a post came to the 2+2 poker forum with all the details, along with a confirmation in the thread from Lee Jones, card room manager of Cake Poker:

Hi folks –
Unfortunately, at the moment, this appears to be real. What’s bizarre is how it happened this one time out of the tens of millions of hands we’ve dealt. Needless to say, our software people have dropped everything else to track this down. I’ll update you as soon as we understand what happened.

A later post from Jones mentioned they would shut down the servers for a brief period of time to see if the issue reappears, more details and information as they become available.

Where in the world is Jamie Gold these days? Maybe he’s looking for the plethora of jobs that aren’t available in Hollywood. Could be that he’s trying to develop “America’s Unemployed Hot Chicks.” But in the world of poker, he does have a gig. Bankroll Boost is reporting that Gold has signed on as a sponsored player at Aced Poker.

Say what?

Good for Gold in finding a gig in these tough times. Honestly, kudos to anyone who is securing work instead of being on the unfortunate end of losing it right now. Maybe we’ll hear more about Aced Poker in the near future, if the site decides to promote him (which they have yet to do – Aced has no mention of him on the pages of its site thus far). And come to think of it, Betfair wasn’t big until it signed Annette Obrestad and Sorel Mizzi, and Cake Poker still hasn’t signed any players to a roster but continues to gain popularity. Aced Poker is clearly trying to work its way into the upper echelon of sites in the American market by signing a recognizable name to promote it. Keep your eyes open for “Aced is Gold” and other oh-so-clever promotions.