On a personal note, I don't plan on depositing a penny on that site until they release the names of the 31 people involved in the cheating scandal.  It's just a big cover up and I'm not supporting a site that threatened to ruin the viability of our games in the United States.

It's sad that Cereus actually has more players now than when the scandal occured, but people take money over "doing the right thing" every day in this world.

100% agree with Chiry! 

I will add, that if any of our instructors does play on the network, I'll be glad to have them make a video there.

My opinion doesn't necessarily reflect the content on the site 100%.  I don't hate think it's a great idea for almost anybody to play the $1s and $2s because of the rake structure, but we just released a video at those levels because users asked for it.

You're missing some information though.

1) Cereus refuses to list the names of the 31 people found to have been involved in the scandal.  They say that it will be tougher to prosecute them if they release the information, but have not tried to prosecute anybody at all.  They just want it swept under the rug.

2) Rakeback players have experienced some major issues at Cereus since the new ownership took over.  Read the 2p2 rakeback affiliate forum for some specific issues.

Again, I do not think yourself or others really understand the full scope of what happened on UB/AP, the extent at which the NEW ownership tried to cover it up, and the broken regulatory system in place for this site:  (quoting this article on 2p2 http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/ub-scandal-sticky... )

"UltimateBet is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, a privately owned company that also owns and operates Absolute Poker.

Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG is run by Joe Norton, the former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake. UltimateBet and Absolute Poker are overseen and licensed by the “independent” Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is a regulatory arm of the Mowhawk Indian tribe in Canada."

So the "indepenent" regulator for UB/AP is a gaming commission that UB/AP's owner used to head up. 

---------

"THE ABSOLUTE AFTERMATH
In summary, the Absolute Poker press release had stated that:

• ”We spent extensive resources thoroughly investigating and analyzing our players’ claims.”
• The result of our investigation is that we found no evidence that any of Absolute Poker’s redundant and varying levels of game client security were compromised.
• ”we have determined with reasonable certainty that it is impossible for any player or employee to see hole cards as was alleged. There is no part of the technology that allows for a “superuser” account”
• ”We base this finding on a thorough security check on a technological level, coupled with a thorough investigation of hand histories including those that did not go to a showdown”

Less than twenty-four hours later it was proven by the investigation’s collaborators that:

• It would be impossible to look at the players’ hole cards without immediately recognizing that POTRIPPER had a superuser account.
• Absolute Poker knew that their game security had been compromised and they tried to cover it up.
• Absolute Poker had planned on continuing to lie about the cheating and had no inclination to repay the players who had been stolen from.

The collaborators investigating Absolute Poker had provided proof of what had actually happened. They knew when the cheating had occurred and more importantly for our purposes, when it stopped. They knew how the cheating had occurred. The why should be obvious.

The last big question needing an answer was who was doing the cheating.

While inspecting the POTRIPPER hand history, some of the collaborators discovered that this file also contained the IP addresses and user details (including email addresses) of all players seated and observing the table. User #363 (which eventually was identified as the superuser account with hole card access) and POTRIPPER both had their accounts traced back to Costa Rica, the home of Absolute Poker’s servers. The e-mail address and IP address linked to #363 was the same as that of another observer using the e-mail address scott@rivieraltd.com, the owner of which was allegedly Absolute Poker co-founder Scott Tom.

Further investigations revealed that rivieraltd.com’s mail server IP (66.212.244.147) was allocated to Absolute Entertainment SA at Mohawk Internet Technologies data center (po12.dr4.kdca.mohawk.ca. Two hours after this discovery was posted on twoplustwo the DNS information at rivieraltd.com had been deleted. Tracks were being covered.

Mohawk.ca should also sound familiar to those of you paying attention so far. To refresh your memory:"

The article requotes the summary about Joe Norton and Mohawk Gaming.

It's just sad to me that people would still choose greed over ethics.  This scandal had the potential (and still does) to completely fuck us out of any meaningful regulation in the States (which has a major impact on poker players anywhere in the world).  And UB/AP won't release the names of the people involved in this and also will not prosecute them.  So they just let their own employees steal from so many players, tried to cover it up, and once they couldn't cover it up, they admitted that people cheated, reimbursed players, fired the employees but refused to name the employees?  How is this acceptable to you lovelydonk?

Read that article I linked to in the beginning of this post.  I don't know anybody that can read it and then deposit on that site.

I'll definitely mention videos to other instructors.  It's something I feel passionate about, but if somebody has some funds on the site I'm sure they can make a video or two.  I know that I won't be touching that network with a ten foot pole though.  Sometimes doing the right thing means making a tough decision.  On this issue, it's a no brainer for me.

I'm fine with giving the company another chance, but only after they release the names of the cheaters.

People basically got a freeroll by stealing from everyday players.  They got caught, but did they even have to return all the money?  You can be sure the cheaters didn't have all the money they stole, so what happened?  Did they actually get to keep some of the money they spent?

These are all super valid questions.  And the guy that was a central part of it, Russ Hamilton, is still chilling in Vegas.  It's sad.

For me, if a company messes up, and isn't willing to be 100% transparent in solving the issue...they won't get a 2nd chance from me. If a company isn't transparent in respect to the things that happened, I will never be sure that it won't happen again.

As Ryan said, it's not only a problem of not going after those few bad guys, but also about the bad image this whole incident (and how it was handled) gave our industry. They harmed the whole industry, and haven't shown real remorse...so they won't see a cent of my money. Not like there aren't enough other sites around.

I used to be a Regular on the $100's on Absolute, but almost didn't play anymore since October after having to cash out all my roll, I'm now trying to move my way back up from the $30's.

The reason I started playing on this site was that after the scandal, most of the good players had left, so it was a fish paradise.  They offered great rakeback / vip deals and the only risk I had to take was them going bancrupt (as it wouldn't make much sense for anyone to cheat in low-stakes games).

At this time, AP was the best site I could play on - I liked the structure of the game, their excellent rakeback and vip deals and playing almost exclusively against fish.  My plan was to move to Stars once I reached the $200's and go for Supernova, but I never made it that high so far.  There also weren't that many alternatives - I absolutely refuse to play on Full Tilt until they allow me to change screen name and affiliate.

At the moment, it's all about making money and building back a roll as quickly as possible, so I'll stay on the site I'm used to till I have at least enough to play the $100's again.

However, I must admid that I wasn't aware some important details of the scandal - I really thought they made a fresh new start with a completely new management - and learning that apparently this new management helped covering it up indeed worries me.

I also have the impressions that there are a lot more regulars recently, so one of my biggest reasons to play on this site seems to diminish.

One thing is true is that for HU SNG, the blind structure is  different and interesting. Starting at 5/10 with 1500 chips is fine for me

Frederic

I think that a lot of the problem with making videos on this site is that as a result of the cheating, there are very few high stakes games that run on Cereus. I had money on there for a while but the wait for games was insanely long and probably 95% of my games were against the regs there (although the regs were very weak). I'm not sure if any of the coaches currently keep money on that site. We will keep it in consideration, but between rare games and moral obligations it might be a little while before we get more Cereus videos up.