New UB Bonus

[Inthacup]

Hey guys,

Just got an email for a reload bonus at UB. Must be that "hardship" bonus. Anyway, here's the email.

[ QUOTE ]
Hi!

We're pleased to offer you a 50% deposit bonus on the next deposit you make at UltimateBet between Thursday August 28th, 2003 at 9 p.m. Eastern and Monday September 8th, 2003 at 9 p.m. Eastern. To take advantage of our deposit bonus offer, simply deposit $25 or more into your poker account at UltimateBet between Thursday August 28th, 2003 at 9 p.m. Eastern and Monday September 8th, 2003 at 9 p.m. Eastern.

After you make a deposit, a maximum of $100 Bonus Dollars will be automatically credited to your account. Bonus Dollars will be converted to real money for play on the site at the rate of $1 for every 10 UltimatePoints you earn at our $.25/$.50 or higher tables. Bonuses are limited to one per person.

Please send any questions you have about our bonus offer to us at Member Services

Sincerely,

Caitlyn



[/ QUOTE ]

If anyone hasn't signed up at UB yet, PM me cause there's a certain way you can sign up and definitely get the 20% deposit bonus. If you clear that before September 8th, you can get the reload bonus as well. Bonus Whore Galore!

Cup

[richie]

Heh, just got the same e-mail myself. And I thought it was because I just took my money out /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Packerfan1]

Well, I'd like some feedback on this one. I got the email too (havent played there in a while, have about $500 on the site). But I've heard of their recent problems and I can't help but wonder if this HUGE bonus could be a last dash for cash before they run???

Find it hard to believe a site as big as UB would do it, but I wasnt around for the Highlands / Poker Spot / others.

Anyone else smell anything funny? Or should I take the easy $100?

Pack

[rusty JEDI]

$100 bonuses are standard. If they were going to take your money and run it would make much more sense to make it a 20% bonus up to $100 so you were forced to deposit $500 instead of $200.

[arod4276]

UB lost alot of players with their recent server problems. Yesterday they completely closed the site and made server upgrades. I'm sure this bonus is a marketing effort to recoup some of the players they lost due to their previous technical difficulties.

With UB's ties to top name high profile pros such as Helmuth and Annie Duke I don't see them going the way of Highlands or PokerSpot. Simply too many poker celebrities reputations at stake. Plus, UB has plenty of working capital (cash), which was a problem with the other sites you mentioned. But you never know.

arod

[microlimitaddict]

is it confirmed that I would be allowed to take advantage of the 50% offer if i clear the initial 20%bonus offer by Sept 8.
in other words, they may be targeting their current players and may stipulations about new players coming in and trying to take advantage of both.

I know the TPCEO was encouraging players to try to clear their initial bonus in time to tke advantage of the current--player bonus that they ran...but obviously this isn't TP.

I will probably investigate though and try to take advantage. whoring opportunities like that don't come along everyday.

[HeartsKing]

Are you trying to get a new account bonus and a deposit bonus? If you've already openned a new account and have a pending bonus, then you should be fine. I have almost $200 in unreleased bonuses there right now, I haven't taken advantage of this most recent one yet. If you haven't openned an account yet, I think you won't be able to take advantage of the reload bonus (my guess is that it's only for people who got the email; I could be wrong on this though). If you actually have a pending bonus and need to make a withdrawal before making the deposit, then that may invalidate the bonus, I haven't checked the fine print. I hope that answers your question.

[JAque]

Hi Cup:

I have a play money account for a long time, will I be able to take the 20% initial deposit/new account bonus? How do you do it?

thanks
JAque

[JohnShaft]

Wow. No way! Has it been that bad?!!

I take a break from Poker for a week or so and find that UB has died on it's feet and loads have left. What the hell.

I think often the sites are to blame in this situation, even besides the obvious.

Step 1 when you are straining under the traffic.
GET RID OF ALL PLAY MONEY PLAYERS AND TABLES.

Hmmm, I'm wondering do I need to start taking money *out* instead of putting it in? Though if everyone did it could have a Wall Street Crash like effect...

[BlueBear]

I have $6 plus in forgotten and uncleared bonuses in UB. Damn, guess I would have to clear that first before whoring the next $100. True?

[nicky g]

That's an interesting point - do poker sites work like banks, in that they only have a fraction of the money invested with them ready to return, or do they simply hold your money for you? Surely it's at least supposed to be the latter, even with the lack of regulation. If it's the former I would seriously reconsider playing online - at least a bank pays you interest to compensate for the small risk of going broke. They're not supposed to be investing the money, simply profiting from the rake. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would quit if I found out that a "run on the bank" style scenario was possibile.

[lunchmeat]

A site called Pokerspot was budgeted on players' funds despite saying that they didn't do that. When it went bust all of the players lost their money, although the management made out just fine. The CEO of Pokerspot was Dutch Boyd, whose name you might recognize from the innocent profile pieces ESPN ran on him during their coverage of the WSOP. Of course, ESPN left out the part about Boyd being online poker's equivalent to Enron CEO Ken Lay.

[nicky g]

Yes, I remember. I'd rather hoped that was a one-off. This is from the Kanahwake Gaming Comission Regulations (http://www.kahnawake.com/gamingcommission/forms/kgcregs.pdf) which regulates UB:

"152: The licence holder or authorized client provider must not have recourse to funds in a players account" (then lists a few exceptions).


I've no idea of its legal status or powers.


On a different note: how long do people think the max bonus would take to clear playing $2/4 6-handed?

[PlayerA]

Cool beans. I hadn't checked email yet (so thanks for post, don't get home email while at work /images/graemlins/wink.gif ). Anyhow, just put in $200 and have $100 pending. I played there last night and it seemed smooth to me. Still lots of players too. They also have the details on their site.

[tiltboy]

I had forgotten I had about $30 in uncleared bonus money at UB when I redeposited the $200 to get $100 in bonus money. The existing bonus is just added to your new bonus so its not possible to tell whether you are clearing the old or the new bonus (nor does it matter I would think).

[Inthacup]

Just an update for everyone:

I've emailed several people I know within UB and hope to have a definite answer on the first time/reload bonus issue. I'll let you guys know as soon as I hear anything.

Cup

[La Brujita]

I am glad they did this. I took out my money a few days ago and now will churn it. I have cleared two $100 bonuses at UB. I don't know how many hours exactly it will take you but imo UB is the second easiest place to clear a bonus (after Party and its skins). If you put your mind to it you could do it in 2-3 days.

[Prickly Pete]

I have about $2 of pending bonus from a previous deposit. My plan was to pull out most of my $ from UB at this point. Now I see the 50% bonus and would like to do this.

Does anyone know for sure if my withdrawing & redepositing will void the 50% bonus? Alternatively, what if I first deposit the $200 and then withdraw what I was going to withdraw (still leaving over $200 there)?

[Inthacup]

Read Tiltboy's post higher in this thread. It should be a problem if you just deposited $200 more.

[J.R.]

UB's problems seem to come from the enourmous torunament traffic they generate, as they offer small buy-in big bet holdem tourneys every hour or two that attract the WPT and WSOP TV crowd.

[Cosimo]

From my past experience at UB,

1) You don't need to clear any existing bonus before doing something that will get you another bonus.

2) You can withdraw (some) money even with a pending deposit bonus and the bonus won't go away.

3) I got a 50% deposit bonus ($50 on $100) and a 20% reload bonus ($100 on $500) in my first month on the site. I've been there for about two months. I think they have reload bonuses about once every four weeks, but they only run for a few days. Take advantage when you can.

4) You get about 1 point for each $1 of rake that the table generates, and 10c of bonus added for each 1 point. In a ten-handed game, you will be contributing about 10% of the rake, hence the bonus is effectively free-rake. Most games on UB that I've played give about 25-30% of 1BB as UltimatePoints per hand. Hence, to get the $100 max bonus here, you will have to play 1000 hands at 2-4. At 60 hands/hour, this will take 16-17 hours. At two tables, about 8 hours.

-Cosimo

[JohnShaft]

In a ten-handed game, you will be contributing about 10% of the rake.

You shouldn't be. You really shouldn't. I don't want to quibble over a couple or few % (even though it can eventually mean thousands of dollars) but 10% for a good player (read: 2+2'er) is just WRONG.

I've got stats for people in my (admittedly limited) Database that have contributed three times as much rake as me over the same number of hands. I'd figure it should be possible to play with people who are paying double your rake regularly.

Really if you're contributing 10% to the rake you oughta "tighten the hell up". Or you're in really bad games.

I don't want to plug a figure out of the air with no data to back me up, but I'm going to do it anyway.
6 maybe 7% in goodish games?

[tiltboy]

I don't know if this answers your question about withdrawing and redepositing but here's my situation.

I deposited $x during a previous UB deposit bonus period and proceeded to clear all but $30 of it. Before I finished clearing it however I withdrew all my funds from UB except the amount under $1. A few days ago I deposited $200 to get the $100 bonus. My bonus account after that shows $130. I've now cleared about $40 of that and my bonus account shows $90. Unfortunately some %^*$ suckouts in the $3/6 game there have taken all that and then some. I mean how often do you flop top set and lose to runner runner quads??? That's the kind of stuff that is only supposed to happen at stars isn't it? /images/graemlins/wink.gif