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Ultimate Poker Closes Down Amid Claims of Mismanagement

(If Dana White’s haggard visage couldn’t get this thing over, nothing could.)

On Friday, the Fertitta-owned Ultimate Poker announced that it would cease accepting wagers effective Monday, November 17, at noon PST. The closure comes after just under 19 months of operation.

Ultimate Poker seemed like a good bet at the start. The online poker world collapsed following a series of legislative and judicial moves, starting with the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act of 2006 and ending with poker’s “Black Friday” on April 15, 2011. Two years later, Nevada passed legislation legalizing online poker within the state. Ultimate Poker rushed their product to market two months later, becoming the first “legal” online poker room in the United States.

A thread on leading poker/gambling forum Two Plus Two discussing Ultimate Poker’s demise details some of the problems with the site. The poker client software had bugs from day one and looked like it had been designed in the ‘90s. When old bugs had been fixed, new bugs popped up. Players often found themselves disconnected from the site during hands. In addition, Ultimate Poker never developed a client for Macs nor a mobile version of their software.

Caesars-backed WSOP.com and South Point Casino’s Real Gaming later joined Ultimate Poker. This crowded the market given a limited player pool in Nevada. (Ultimate Poker also ran in New Jersey between July 2013 and September of this year.) The Las Vegas Review-Journal, citing numbers from PokerScout.com, notes that Ultimate Poker “averaged just 60 players in one sitting much of the time over the past two weeks.” Suffice to say, you can’t operate an online card room with 60 players.

More damning evidence of Ultimate Poker’s demise came from a video made by former Director of Player Operations (and one-time pro MMA fighter) Terrence Chan. In the video, which features an anecdote about Dana White being brought in to give an inspirational speech, Chan discusses the software issues (which executives never prioritized improving) to the tight market, but also reveals a few anecdotes that shed some light into the internal operations of the company…

(If Dana White’s haggard visage couldn’t get this thing over, nothing could.)

By Mike Fagan

On Friday, the Fertitta-owned Ultimate Poker announced that it would cease accepting wagers effective Monday, November 17, at noon PST. The closure comes after just under 19 months of operation.

“There’s a legend about one of these executives sitting through a meeting,” Chan says, noting that he was not present at said meeting. “They were showing him the new unveiling of the redesigned website for the casino in New Jersey. And they had to explain things to him like what a navbar is or what Flash is, and that kind of stuff. So there’s this really lengthy walkthrough of this new website redesign. At the end of it, he sits there and he comments, ‘I think the logo needs more purple.’”

This spoke to the broader culture at the top of the Ultimate Poker food chain. (Emphasis mine.)

“I think there was a lot of application of the old-school brick-and-mortar model to this new internet business, and I think that was a bit anachronistic. I’m talking about everything here: poker room promotions, casino promotions, advertising, social media, branding. Literally everything was influenced – to say the least – by Station Casinos and the top brass there who had an old school approach.”

Chan’s description of company culture may sound familiar to MMA fans and fighters alike: “There was a lot of leadership through fear and authority and ‘this is how it’s going to be.’ … In the end there was very little dissent.”

Despite the obstacles of regulation and a competitive market, Chan believes that Ultimate Poker could have been a great company, but that the internal operations of the company – not letting “poker people” run the operation, paying consultants exorbitant amounts of money instead of investing in talented people within the company, etc. – ultimately led to its downfall. The UFC owes its success both to the work done by people within the company and a whole lot of luck, but one wonders if the top-down approach that killed Ultimate Poker might bring down the largest fight promotion on the planet.

Fabio Maldonado Receives Sizable Bonus Check for Getting Beat Up at UFC 153

Geez, these XARM events have been getting weird…

It can be argued that no losing fighter has ever deserved one of UFC’s famous locker-room bonus checks than Fabio Maldonado after his downright terrifying loss to Glover Teixeira at UFC 153.

If this was professional wrestling, we’d say this was the fight that got Glover “over” in the UFC. The brutal asskicking that Teixeira dished out transitioned him from MMA’s best-kept secret to a legitimate light-heavyweight contender, causing fans throughout the world to say “Huh, so that’s what a 10-7 round looks like.”

Yet Fabio Maldonado kept fighting back, almost pulling off one of the most insane comebacks in UFC history as he rocked Teixeira near the end of the first round. Maldonado kept coming back for more until the cageside doctor put an end to the fight after the second round. I’m not going to write something cheesy like “it was a moral victory for Fabio Maldonado,” but I would understand why a person would.

The beating that Fabio Maldonado took wasn’t for nothing – at least not financially. Maldonado revealed on his Facebook page that he recently received one of the UFC’s famed locker-room bonus checks, and it was worth more money than his win bonus would have been. Via MMAWeekly:

Geez, these XARM events have been getting weird…

It can be argued that no losing fighter has ever deserved one of UFC’s famous locker-room bonus checks than Fabio Maldonado after his downright terrifying loss to Glover Teixeira at UFC 153.

“Just got a check from the UFC,” he commented in Portuguese, noting it was the fourth time he received a bonus [Author Note: That makes him 4/4 for receiving bonus checks, for those of you keeping score]. “The UFC paid me more than if I had won the fight. Thanks to the Fertitta brothers, Dana White and Joe Silva.”

The money UFC fighters make is also often compared to the headline inducing paydays in the boxing world. White often explains that what people are comparing is apples to oranges, as they’re looking at the miniscule amount of boxers at the top of the heap pulling in tremendous paydays, while those at the bottom are sometimes fighting for $50 or $100 a round.

Maldonado, who fought for years in as a professional boxer (with a 22-0 record), sounds as if he agrees, at least to some degree.

“Fought boxing, never seen it happen before,” he said of the bonus he received, even in a losing effort.

Keep in mind that Fabio Maldonado made $11,000 to show at UFC 153, meaning that the bonus check he just received was almost assuredly worth more than that. That’s pretty generous, and definitely well-deserved. When a fighter is willing to take the long-term brain damage that accompanies a beating like the one Maldonado took for the sake of putting on a memorable fight, he deserves special compensation.

Just try not to take too many more beatings like that, Fabio. It’s not exactly good for your long-term health.

@SethFalvo

UFC 144: Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz on Japan, Fertittas, and a Changing Game

There’s something about Tokyo, Japan, that’s larger than life. Maybe it’s the bright lights, neon-stripped pathways to whatever pleasures you can imagine and some you’d never dream of in a million years. Maybe it’s the people. Thousands of them. Millions. Teeming is the word most commonly used for a city that seems full to bursting. […]

Get Ready to Be Entertained by Lookoutawhale and Chaplin’s House’s Latest Collaboration

(Video courtesy of YouTube/notlookoutawhale)

If you aren’t familiar with the work of lookoutawhale and Chaplin’s House, do yourself a favor and spend some time getting to know them before you enjoy their latest collaborative masterpiece, “The UFC Bunch,” featuring Dana White, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, Bruce Buffer, Joe Rogan, Chuck Liddell and Joe Silva.

Check out more from the dynamic duo after the jump.

(“Chuck…are you okay? Is he sleeping? Chuck, wake up!!”)

(Video courtesy of YouTube/notlookoutawhale)

You may recall their last team-up produced the the widely popular “Bisping’s Island“:

(Video courtesy of ChaplinsHouse)

And Whale’s animated tales of Chael Sonnen:

(Video courtesy of YouTube/notlookoutawhale)

Culinary Union Asks FTC to Probe Zuffa for Anti-Competitive Business Practices

Source: Las Vegas Review Journal Zuffa and more notably the Fertittas have been forced into a battle with the Las Vegas Culinary Union Local 226, and oppositions have heated up as the Culinary 226 has.

Source: Las Vegas Review Journal

Zuffa and more notably the Fertittas have been forced into a battle with the Las Vegas Culinary Union Local 226, and oppositions have heated up as the Culinary 226 has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into what they believe are violations of Anti-Trust laws on the part of Zuffa.

In the past year, we have learned that Culinary workers have protested the Fertitta owned Station Casinos (which is a non-union gaming company) in an effort to put a stop to their “anti-union campaign.” The union has openly protested that Station Casinos prevents and interferes in their employees’ rights to organize.

Already added to these troubles, Zuffa and more vocally, Dana White believes it is the culinary union [in New York] that is halting the legalization of MMA in NY. Dana had said to MMA Weekly:

“It has nothing to do with Mixed Martial Arts, of all things, it’s the Culinary Union that’s keeping us out of New York. They’re powerful guys here. The economic impact we have on a city is huge.”

“This time we got all the way up, got all the votes all the way (through various committees), but they never put us on the floor to try and get the votes. They are spending union member dues to fight the UFC from coming (to New York).”

And today in Las Vegas, in what looks like it could have been motivated by their union feud, the Director of Culinary Research, Ken Liu wrote to the FTC:

“Zuffa has preserved and strengthened this dominant market position through exclusionary conduct by refusing to co-promote events, as well as anticompetitive contractual restraints that severely limit a professional athlete’s freedom of movement,”

Yahoo! Sports sites further examples from the Culinary 226′s complaints in the letter:

– The champion’s clause, which automatically renews a contract for UFC champions.

— Merchandising rights that give Zuffa rights to a fighter’s image in perpetuity. This clause is what Jon Fitch had a problem with when he was briefly cut from the organization.

— Restraints on athlete’s mobility and pay, meaning that by buying up the marketplace. Zuffa can keep a fighter from engaging the marketplace for fair pay.

The Las Vegas Review Journal notes: The union cites a 2008 independent equities research firm report which estimates Zuffa owns 80 to 90 percent of the MMA market.

In recent months Zuffa has purchased their biggest competitor, the Strikeforce promotion, which looks to be disbanding and who’s television contract with Showtime Network will expire in 2012. Also this year, Zuffa has made a huge beneficial impact with their fighters by providing health insurance, which is not currently offered by any other MMA promotion.