Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - ProductMan
UltimateBet has been dominating the poker scene for over a decade. When we first started dealing digital cards, the internet was a vastly different place. It was all about 56K modems, Windows 98, and something called a Pentium. Since then the internet has been moving at light speed. Could you have imagined twitter, youtube, facebook, podcasts, and blogs back in those days? The fact is things are always evolving, especially in the world of technology. Perhaps the only thing that’s stayed the same is that we still have cards at our core.
We’ve added tons of great features over the years like avatars that let you add an extra dimension to your poker personality. Our hand history improvements let you relive your glory and learn from your mistakes. We brought you blackjack 3 years ago and don’t forget our unbelievable 7 Deuce and Horse tables. We’re proud of our new table schemes and popular promos like our Bad Beat Jackpot, RAI$E, and our lucrative Tournament Leaderboards. Let’s not forget the extra tourneys and players we added through the CEREUS network a year ago.
You can expect tons of exciting changes before the year is out. Stay tuned and let us know what you’d like to see. You can always post your feedback into the blog. It’s almost 2010, so you should probably get in the blogosphere, or whatever they’re calling it these days. We love hearing from you!
Tags: 7 Duece, Bad Beat Jackpot, blackjack, Horse Tables, RAI$E, tournament leaderboards, ub
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Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - HollywoodDave
Thaaaaaat’s right! A few days ago yours truly took down my very first WSOP Circuit event, baybee! Along with the official WSOP ring comes a bundle of cash and yet another first place notch on my growing list of poker creds… after years in the blackjack trenches, its nice to continue the conquests on the poker felt.
For some reason, I’ve always done well at Caesar’s. Don’t know why — have yet to cash in a Venetian deepstack event, but seem to do well in most every tourney I play at Caesar’s. Last year i went deep in 2 events there, so to finally win one feels awesome! Its been awhile since I’ve won a live tourney (too much time cleaning up online!) but I def have been playing more live lately to get ready for this year’s WSOP (which starts in only like 4 weeks!)
Sooooo….here are all the gritty details from my win! After buying in at Hellmuth Time (read: last possible second before they closed registration 2 hours in lol), I proceeded to ship away 60% of my chipstack in the first 2 hands, going from 6k to 2400! Both times I ended up with open-ended straight draws in multi-way pots that I had odds to stay in, but none of the draws hit and I ended up just blowing chips unnecessarily. We’ve all been there — just cheap enough to stay in the pot over, but not something you feel good about!
From there I just locked it down and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Til I found the double up with pocket Jacks that got me close to being healthy again. And so on — all the way to the dinner break, playing super tight and waiting for those few key hands to keep me floating right around chip average. At dinner I knew with the blinds going up as quickly as they were, even having chip av was not going to cut it soon, so I was gonna have to make some higher variance plays after the break to take a shot at pulling in some chips. The good news here was that my super tight image was starting to pay off, as I could now steal with impunity 
Well, I didn’t have to wait long. First hand back from dinner, my QQ cracked 99 and I was off and running. The next hand my JJ took down some blinds. And a few hands later my KK took care of more bizness! But the big coup came when my QQ cracked KK in a monster pot not too long later, sending me near the top of the chipleader pile, where I stayed for pretty much the rest of the tourney.
Patience was a huge watchword for me this tourney — first, without many chips it helped me wait for those key double up hands. And 2nd, when I DID have chips, the patience to keep from doubling anybody ELSE up! What surprised me was how often i was actually FOLDING my marginal hands in late position (as opposed to constantly attacking the blinds) — playing in so many aggro online tourneys has def made me much more aggressive in this arena, but folding as often as I did in that position meant that when I DID raise to steal, my marginal hands were given tons more respect.
Eventually I worked my way to 3 players left, once of them Paul ‘Eskimo’ Clark. I was pretty much tied for the lead with the other player (Jack Andelman), but with Eskimo not too far behind and the blinds pretty much out of control, we decided to save 15k apiece and play for the ring and the remaining 8k. 5 minutes later, I was kinda regretting the decision as I had over half the chips in play!!! But then in standard poker fashion, Eskimo ran a badly timed bluff into Jack’s KK and suddenly my 1.2 million chips were being challenged by Jack’s 1 million chipstack. Normally I love to fight all the way to the end, but with the blinds so high (20k/60k with a 5k ante) we both had less than 20 BB and that took most of the play outta the game. So I locked in the win, the ring, and we chopped up the rest of the money right then and there. Not bad for 2 day’s work!!
Of course there’s been plenty of celebrating the past few days, but now its all about gearing up for the real thing: the WSOP! What a nice way to warm-up, but I am more than ready for the real thing….
rock on –
-hd.
Tags: blackjack, Caesars Palace, Hellmuth, Venetian, WSOP
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Saturday, April 4, 2009 - Cardroom
That’s the code you need for the *huge* RELOAD bonus happening at Ultimate Bet. Reload between now and April 6th and receive up to $650 in bonus dollars!! Complete details can be found here
We’ve made some recent changes to our tournament schedule to enhance the variety of satellites we offer along with keeping the schedule fun and exciting. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact our fast and efficient support team and be sure to familiarize yourself with the changes by checking out the schedule here
For those of you who like to enjoy a few hands of BlacjJack while waiting for the big tourney to come up or to wind down after that tense final table, we have some hot news. We’re giving away $21K in 21 days! That’s $1000 to the player who wins the most blackjacks each day. Find out more here and good luck at the tables!
The Card Room
Tags: blackjack, reload bonus, tournament schedule
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Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - HollywoodDave
Yup you heard it here first, fuckers — another 7 days in the desert for HD and this time was particularly awesome! Despite not cashing in the Dream Team event, I had tons of FUN the whole time and left with a big smile on my face…. after years of grinding it out in the trenches playing blackjack there, you get to a point where you start to see that town as nothing but a glorified jobsite, so its cool to remember from time to time that its not always all work and no play!
First off I came in for my sister Erica Schoenberg’s b-day….no we’re not really related but despite being a bit older than her, she’s always been like a big sis to me so it stuck! Obv we went out with her dad, brother, and bf David Benyamine to a nice steak dinner at the Bellagio where the food (and drinks!) rocked but the service was slooooooooow as shit! Needless to say we had a blast but missed the movie we were gonna see afterwards cuz it took too long to get the different courses out. Some good conversation with some awesome people, and funny to realize that David wasn’t gonna be able to play in the Dream Team event partly due to a 500k blackjack tournament he was comped into that weekend! I woulda loved to trade places with him, cuz something tells me he woulda done much better than me in the poker event while i more than cleaned up on blackjack…
Speaking of Dream Team, the event was put together REALLY well, and I was happy to see so many pros supporting it this time around. Last year at the Hard Rock was a lotta fun but felt more like a trial run, whereas this go around it really ran like a top-notch pro event i could really see becoming a necessary annual stop on the tour! My friend Alex Outhred of WSOP Academy fame (not to mention his super deep run at last year’s WSOP main event) provided red carpets interviews and some truly funny running commentary throughout the event, which gave everything a pretty fun vibe. If only I had done better lol
Basically I doubled up right away to 20k and then couldn’t win for shit after that. My doublethru was pure poetry… somebody weak limped up front (after playing so much online the past year its awesome to play live and notice the confidence levels of your opponents, something much harder to ’see’ online) so I decided to raise with J7 late to isolate and/or take the pot away from him. He made an obvious crying call with a hand I knew he really thought he shoulda mucked, and WOWZA on the dream J77 flop! Even dreamier when this guy called my 60% pot size bet on the flop, turn, and then checkraised me all in on the river when his Ace-baby soooted flush hit! Yum yum, thank you very much sir….
After that I couldn’t make a continuation bet to save my life. I had about a dozen hands where I’d raise with AQ, 88, AK, etc etc, miss the flop completely, get checked to, make a c-bet, and then get my face checkraised off my someone else in the pot! Fold, rinse, repeat. I love poker. Eventually i made a stand with AQ on an AQx-sooted flop, getting it all in against a made flush. Awesome! Go team….Erica made it all the way to the money bubble but i guess Dream Team just wasn’t to be.
On to the Vegas hijinks! The rest of the weekend was a blast, not only some fabulous meals with great people, but a good time out at the clubs (shenanigans at Prive in Planet Hollywood with none other than AP hottie Liv Boeree) and the requisite prop betting/alcoholic consumption combo that is the spice of life (i think this time around featured making out with overweight chicks for cash late nite at Caesar’s). Never a dull moment!
But obv the best of all was being able to spend lots of time with my new crush Mary Beth… I def have a weakness for hot, smart, crazy chicks and this girl fits the bill to a T! Something tells me I may be telling stories about her in my blogs for some time to come…
alright rockstars, i’m out!
-hd.
Tags: blackjack, David Benyamine, Erica Schoenberg, Hollywood Dave, las vegas, Liv Boeree, WSOP
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - HollywoodDave
2009 is almost here, thank fuck, and not a moment too soon! Despite pulling it all together in the 11th hour, I spent the vast majority of ‘08 buried in a deep hole that played havoc with not only my gambling bankroll, but more importantly, my emotions as well. The good news is, I learned some incredible lessons this year that I will never forget.
I answered a question awhile back for a player on UB about bankroll management, a lesson I had beaten into my head in 2008. Although I’ve come outta the mathematically-savvy background of professional blackjack, where BR mgmt goes hand in hand with skilled play, over the past few years of playing poker I had allowed some of those caveats to slip away, and found myself not heeding my own advice last winter.
The year started off alright — several nice cashes the first 2 weeks of January — but then a disastrous downward spiral from mid-January to mid-April decimated years of work. Problem was, rather than moving down in stakes as the losses mounted, I stayed at the same level — and in some cases, actually increased levels. Ouch!
In hindsight, its easy to see how badly I compounded my own problems by not adjusting downward in stakes as my BR shrunk, but what’s morel troubling to me is the sometimes uncontrollable swings that are commonplace in poker. I admit it, I’ve been luckier than most; in over 5 years as a professional gambler, I never had a losing year. Sure, some years were better than others, but coming off of a quarter million in poker wins in 2007, I was totally unprepared for such incredible negative variance.
As a blackjack player, swings are built in to the equation. As a card counter, I can only depend on 1-2% advantage, which means I’m losing nearly half the time. You learn that its not about the session results, but only about applying the right plays under optimal table conditions. Shit, I even wrote a book about it! So you’d think I woulda known better, because truth be told, poker is the same way — fuck the results, just play well & under the right conditions & it will all work out in the end.
The difference — at the time, anyway — was that despite the cool math of the blackjack world, my reaction to the poker losses was much more emotional in nature. I found myself getting upset in ways I never did when losing at blackjack. I began to feel cursed, as the daily losses mounted. Some days I’d take a break, only to come back later twice as frustrated when the results still did not return. And the farther I dug myself in, the unhappier I became, until it seemed like my entire life revolved around this negative figure that loomed larger each and every day.
Eventually I came to realize that this was bigger than just wins and losses, it was about my mental health, my happiness as a person, and my quality of life outside of whatever was happening on the tables. And somewhere inside something shifted, and I realized that I was not gonna be held prisoner to my results anymore. Rich or poor, I was gonna try my best to take the emotion out of the equation, and remember that I was gonna be the same cool person regardless of what happened. And you know what? The losing stopped!
Now, the point of this story isn’t what you’d think — I’m sure it helped, but i don’t think the ENTIRE problem of why I lost for so long was simply my attitude towards it. Sometimes shit happens, and we go through long losing streaks — happens to the best players out there, and I’m certainly no exception. But what 2008 DID teach me more than anything is that I can’t make the quality of my life about the quality of my results. Sure, winning a WSOP bracelet and a couple million bucks is definitely on the list for me, but inside I will still be the same person. Same person as I will be when fighting to keep it all from flying away.
So thanks, 2008. Sick, twisted emotional and financial rollercoaster, but you know what? I appreciate it. I get it. Thanks for making me stronger. Thanks for actually letting me get all those losses back at the end of it all — I guess I can still say I never had a losing year as a professional gambler. And now please fuck off, cuz 2009 is a-comin’ and I am more than ready to rock it out all year long!!
-hd.
Tags: 2009, bankroll management, blackjack, downturn, Happy New Year, Hollywood Dave, negative variance, new year, Poker Poker Poker, wsop bracelet
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