The Wonderfully New and Improved Cereus

Filed in archive Internet Poker on July 31, 2008

image from www.uklon.ac.uk

There was a new tube of deodorant sitting on the counter for me to put away after the wife lovingly did some (over)shopping at Target. On the label of my dependable under-arm sweat and odor protection stick it proclaimed to be "new" and "improved". As a test I decided to put on the shield of stink on Monday and see what reactions I would get by today after three softball games and nightly Wii Fit training.

The only thing "improved" was the darker yellow tint on my t-shirts.

Time will tell if the rebranding of Absolute and UltimateBet into one site called Cereus will have players forgetting about the recent uncoverings of super-user accounts to swindle the hard earned cash by several high stakes players. A few questions arise from the timing of this announcement and subsequent launch of the new site:

1. Why was this not mentioned at the World Series of Poker? Hellmuth and Duke and 17th place finisher Tiffany Michele sported UB-wear to the max during the biggest online poker marketing bonanza of the year. Granted the ESPN replays of the main event and bracelet events leading up to "live" final table will keep poker in the mainstream for awhile, but why not have a huge coming out party during poker's biggest stage?

2. The announcement of Cereus happening fairly close after the busting of Russ Hamilton (former owner of UB) as one of the super-users. Pointing fingers without all the facts is wasted air, but for a project of this size, you'd think some kind of leak or hints would have made it way around the 2+2 message boards or blogs much earlier then last week

Follow the link to Pokerati's take on the news.