Sunday, January 02, 2011

UltimateBet Cheating Victim Poker Pro Prahlad Friedman Ready to Sign With UB.com As Newest Team Member

This news, after the departure of Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke from the UB.com team, might have some of you wondering, but apparently Friedman, who has bragged that he was about the only recognized poker pro who had never signed with an online poker site and would never do so, is about to do just that. He'd even gone as far as calling his signing with an online poker site (any online poker site) "selling out."

Friedman, thirty-two years-old and owner of a World Series of Poker bracelet as well as a World Poker Tour title, became the hot topic of discussion on the TwoPlusTwo poker forum when posters typing in the URL for Annie Duke's biography on UB.com instead landed on a bio of Freidman. The exact amount of money Friedman lost in the Russ Hamilton-engineered UltimateBet online cheat scam is not known but is suspected to be in the area of $100,000. Friedman was also involved in a clock-controversy at this year's WSOP Main Event where he could have been elimated earlier than he was if not for being saved by the bell.

In any event, we should be hearing official news from UB.com early this week.

One TwoPlusTwo poster wrote that Freidman's signing might just mark the end of a bad era for online poker: "I think that for many of us UB is forever tainted. However, in the world of PR, signing Prahlad would be a very, very good move as a sign of different times ahead."

I agree.