Eric “Rizen” Lynch Joins Ultimate Bet’s Star Player Team

Ultimate Bet signed another internet poker superstar this past week, Eric “Rizen” Lynch. Lynch is a highly respected player, both because of his skills at the table and his class and integrity as a person. He has been a fixture atop the PocketFives.com tournament rankings for quite some time, even though he has slipped a bit over the last few months, largely due to health issues (had his gall bladder removed in February) and more live event play.

Lynch has won many major online tournaments, including the PokerStars $1 million guaranteed. He has been making strides in his live tournaments over the last couple years, finishing 24^th in the 2006 WSOP Main Event ($494,797) and making three WSOP final tables, one in 2006 and two in 2007.

His signing has created a stir in the internet poker world, as many are not happy with the fact that Lynch, a highly regarded player and family man, would promote a poker room which has recently been involved in a major cheating scandal. There has been a fairly loud backlash against Lynch, just as there was against Cliff Josephy, who signed about one week earlier.

Lynch said in a recent blog post that he feels that Ultimate Bet’s management is making strides in the right direction and that he made this decision very carefully. “If I had ANY doubts in my mind that going forward that the management team at Ultimate Bet did not have security as a top priority and that they had the ability to execute those security improvements in the future, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because I would not have signed with them,” he said on his website.

“The honest to god truth,” he said in a later entry, “is in the 6 months i've [sic] been talking to them I've witnessed improvements and changes that I believe has them headed in the right direction and I want to be a part of that.”