According to a report at www.PocketFives.com Absolute Poker and UB Poker players may indeed be repaid by the soon to be liquidated sites… but only to the tune of about 20% of their account balances. According to the article, “Two reliable sources close to Absolute Poker and UB have indicated that players owed money from the two CEREUS Network sites could be repaid 15 to 20 cents on the dollar.”

While the potential payments are far below what most players were hoping for, they are also far above the real-world expectations most Absolute Poker and UB Poker players believed they would receive after Black Friday left the Cereus Poker Network absolutely reeling – only the troubles of Full Tilt Poker managed to keep AP and UB out of the poker communities crosshairs.

By way of their regulatory body, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, the Cereus Poker Network has announced plans to liquidate all of their remaining assets in an attempt to appease the US Department of Justice, and to repay their player base. The announcement signaled the end for what virtually everyone in the online poker community saw as an inevitability the moment Black Friday’s extent was made clear, the demise of the two poker sites.

Since Black Friday traffic at the sites has all but vanished, with only handfuls of real-money player participating at the AP and UB poker tables at any given time according to the tracking site pokerscout.com.

The once prominent poker network (despite the earlier Super-User scandals) has been relegated to the bottom of the online poker barrel and the company has laid-off virtually every non-essential (and even many essential) employees since April.

Earlier last week Absolute Poker co-founder Brent Beckley (who was apprehended in the aftermath of Black Friday) pleaded guilty to a number of charges leveled against him by the US Department of Justice. Beckley admitted to knowingly deceiving banks in order to circumnavigate the UIGEA laws passed in 2006, and thanks to his plea deal is looking at 1-1.5 years in prison (Beckley could have been sentenced to up to 30 years based on the charges he was accused of).

There is still no word yet on where Beckley’s friend and Absolute poker co-founder Scott Tom is, although the pocketfives.com article mentions he has been buying property in Antigua.

In the end it seems the three sites indicted on Black Friday will all end up at different destinations:

* PokerStars, which seems to have had a few contingency plans in place for such an event, has come out of Black Friday in a stronger position –as crazy as that sounds.

* Full Tilt Poker looks to be nearing the completion of a sale that would turn the company over to Groupe Bernard Tapie. Where the once prominent but now offline site goes from there is anyone’s guess.

* The Cereus Poker Network (Absolute Poker and UB Poker) will likely be completely defunct within a few months; becoming footnotes in the history of online poker.

Tags: Absolute Poker, Black Friday, Cereus, Co Founder, Department Of Justice, Full tilt Poker, Handfuls, Inevitability, Kahnawake Gaming Commission, Money Player, Online Poker, Poker Network, poker players, Poker Sites, Poker Tables, Real Money, Regulatory Body, Reliable Sources, Scandals, Us Department Of Justice

This entry was posted on Monday, December 26th, 2011 at 8:20 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.