Ultimate Poker Loses Half Its Sponsored Pros

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Monday, August 25th, 2014 | Written by Shane Larson

On April 30th, 2013, Ultimate Gaming, a majority-owned subsidiary of Station Casinos, launched UltimatePoker.com, the first regulated iPoker website in the United States. At the time Chairman Tom Breitling expressed his hope the pioneering brand would eventually carve out a place for itself as “the players’ choice for online poker,” and soon after top poker professional Antonio Esfandiari was signed as Ultimate Poker’s official Brand Ambassador. In the ensuing months a number of other sponsored players also joined the site, but plagued by dwindling traffic the poker room has now decided to bin five of its eight sponsored members of Team Ultimate.

Team Pros disappear from site

Ultimate Poker seemed to have had quite a few signed sponsored pro on its team for a fledgling online poker business, but it would now seem reality has caught up with expectations after the company had to end its affiliation with many of them. First to break the news was a former Ultimate Poker Team Pro himself, Randy Dorfman, who posted the following message via his twitter account:

“Ultimate Poker drops Pros Will Reynolds, Jeremy Ausmus, Phil Collins & Brent Hanks. Maybe time 4 Stations to drop people running UP? #toolate.”

Female poker role model Lauren Kling has also since been axed, reducing the number of poker pros still employed by Ultimate Poker to just Antonio Esfandiari, Jason Somerville, Danielle Andersen and Dan O’ Brien.

Meanwhile, none of the involved pros or representatives of the company have issued any official word on the departures.

Summer Exodus

Signs of Ultimate Poker’ continuing decline were apparent for all to see this summer at a time when fellow Nevada iPoker site WSOP.com enjoyed a bumper few months on account of the 45th World Series Of Poker and its association with the iconic live tournament series. Meanwhile, Ultimate Poker saw no discernible uptick in its own player traffic and many of its major managers opted, instead, to leave the company, including Chief Marketing Officer Joe Versaci, and Director of Player Operations in Nevada and New Jersey Terrence Chan.

Terrence Chan’s departure has particularly hard felt asthe trusted member of the poker community had worked tirelessly to maintain his department’s good reputation, whilst also being a regular at players forums where he encouraged open communication with players. Since his departure, however, this area has practically ground to a halt, too, and Ultimate Poker’s reputation has now taken a huge beating overall.

Times have changed

Ultimate Poker enjoyed an encouraging start in Nevada‘s fledgling igaming market when it was the sole online poker website available in the state, and between May and September 2013 it boasted up to 220 cash game players over a seven-day period. After WSOP.com launched, however, traffic started heading south for Ultimate Poker and according to PokerScout the site now is showing just 70 cash game players at any one time, compared to WSOP.com which is currently showing 95 cash players. Nevada’s third site, Real Gaming, is still in its beta testing stage and apparently last week had a peak of just 5 cash players on the site during its peak period.

Similarly, Ultimate Poker launched in New Jersey‘s regulated iPoker market on November 21st, 2013, but has been unable to gain any traction. Casing point, whereas market leader Party Borgata is currently showing 140 cash players over a seven-day period with a peak of 285 players, for Ultimate (New Jersey) that figure falls to zero cash game players rising to 5 during peak traffic.

Future of Ultimate Poker

A number of reasons have been suggested for Ultimate Poker’s disappointing performance so far, including unattractive software with no regular updates, less enticing promotional campaigns than its competitors,in addition to the well documented geo-location and payment processing problems currently plaguing the US iGaming industry.

Talking with cardplayer.com, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer Todd Kobrin explained that Ultimate Poker was working on straightening out many of the issues blighting its business, such as launching its own Ultimate prepaid card allowing players to use a VISA to make a deposit.

Striking an optimistic note for the future, Kobrin expressed his belief Ultimate Poker is well placed to take advantage of a future Californian iPoker industry, and as he explains:

“We have deals with various tribes. Station actually manages and runs a casino about 45 minutes north of San Francisco. When California does finally legalize, we will get a license and be one of the operators in the market. One of the huge advantages that we have, due to our relationship with UFC, it has its biggest following in California. We are already starting to build a database with a lot of California players.”