Eric “Rizen” Lynch Leaves UltimateBet

Less than a month after joining Ultimate Bet’s “Star Player Team,” Eric Lynch, who is known online as “Rizen,” has stepped down from his role as one of the site’s spokespersons.   

Lynch, highly regarded both as a person and an online player, caught a tremendous amount of heat from fans and players in the internet poker world for “selling out” to a poker room which has recently been mired in a major cheating scandal.  He said that, after talking with management, he felt that he had no doubts about their dedication to security and that the site was headed in the right direction. 

In his blog yesterday, Lynch said that he had begun to have some doubts as to the management’s ability to turn UltimateBet back into one of the top poker sites on the internet (for reference, while UB is the third largest poker room that accepts U.S. players when it comes to cash game traffic, it is only ninth overall, with one-twelfth the cash game traffic of PokerStars and one-sixth that of Full Tilt).  He was particularly discouraged with how long the changes he recommended were taking to be implemented, that UB lowered its prize pool guarantees on its new tournaments, and how the company handled his and Cliff Josephy’s signings. 

In the end, as doubts crept into his mind, Lynch and his wife decided that the money he would make from the endorsement was not worth how he would feel if his fears came true.  He wishes nothing but the best for UB, though: 

“I actually hope to god that my doubts end up having no foundation whatsoever. In my dealings with them I have met a lot of wonderful people at UB whom I really wish success to. I will definitely say that everyone I have personally dealt with over there seems to have their heart in the right place. That being said there were various things, all of which are truly of a private nature and pertain only to me, not some sort of grand conspiracy or secret that I'm keeping from the world. It created enough doubt in my mind about the direction of the brand moving forward that I no longer felt comfortable associating myself with it.”