By Adam Ulick | November 25, 2009

Ultimate Bet has had a rough go of it during the last couple years. The superuser scandal shook the online poker industry to its foundation and severely damaged the reputation of the poker room, even though it appears as if current management had nothing to do with the cheating. Last week, in a move similar to Phillip Morris’ name change to Altria, Ultimate Bet rebranded itself, attempting to distance itself from the ills of its past.

Unlike Phillip Morris, however, UltimateBet’s rebranding is not a complete identity change. Rather, the poker room is now going by its old nickname, UB. The new UB.com is still part of the Cereus Network along with its sister site, Absolute Poker. No plans have been announced for a similar rebranding of Absolute.

Aside from the name, the primary changes at UB.com are cosmetic. The logo is different – what was once a black and yellow poker chip with a lower case “ub,” is now an uppercase “UB” with the “B” drawn to resemble the shape of a tilted spade. The color scheme is still black and yellow, but it is brighter and slicker than before (if it makes sense to say black can be “brighter”). A secondary color, light blue, has been added, as well. It doesn’t show up very often – only on the “Login” button in the UB.com client, the download buttons and links on the UB.com website, and in the logo animation on the website. It does contribute to that aforementioned brightness, though, and helps give UB.com a nice, clean look.

UB players will also see a few changes to the lobby. Most of it is still the same, but one immediately noticeable addition is the new icon set added to certain columns to allow players to quickly see variations in the tables. For cash games, there are now icons for Turbo, Jackpot, 7-2 Action, Deep Stack, 50 Min BB, and Ante tables. For tournaments, there are also Turbo and Deep Stack icons, as well as Ultra Turbo, Rebuy, Bounty, 6 Max, 4 Max, and Heads-up. Each icon is color coded and an icon legend is located at the bottom of the lobby. For some reason, this legend can be minimized. There is really no reason to do this, as removing the legend only adds one more table listing to the lobby and it’s not like the legend is distracting.

Additionally, UB’s game filtering system has been enhanced with many more filtering options. Players can now filter by game (a bit superfluous, as there are already game tabs), buy-in, tourney type (satellites, steps, points, freerolls), game variation (freezeout, rebuys, turbo, ultra turbo, deep stack), number of players, limit, and status.

As mentioned earlier, UB.com was one of the founding members of the Cereus Network, along with Absolute Poker, which is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises, the same company that owns UB.com. According to online poker traffic watchdog site, PokerScout.com, the Cereus Network its tied for sixth in cash game popularity, with 2,300 unique players on average over the past seven days. It is tied with Everest Poker, although Everest Poker’s peak numbers are better. Cereus is technically the third largest poker network, if you take out the independent sites PokerStars (1st), Full Tilt Poker (2nd), Party Poker (4th), and the OnGame Network (5th). The iPoker Network, (3rd), Party Poker, Ongame, and Everest do not accept American customers, which makes Cereus the 3rd largest United States-friendly site, behind PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth, long time spokespeople for UltimateBet.com, are still UB.com pros. UB has been making a concerted effort to grow its Team UB with young players, the latest being Joe Sebok, the founder of PokerRoad Radio. Sebok, along with Scott Huff, debuted their new poker news show, Poker2Nite, on Fox Sports last week. The show is sponsored by UB.com.

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