Introduction
Many classic gamling and poker stories are missed nowadays on account that so much gamling takes place online; https://www.gamblingsitesreview.com/ is a great examole of that. Russ Hamilton is one of the most interesting figures in Blackjack history and is both a successful Blackjack and Poker player, and it’s the latter that got Hamilton started. Hamilton started playing in underground poker games around the Detroit area and eventually moved to Las Vegas, where Blackjack became his new passion. In the years that followed, he contributed immensely to the game of Blackjack but will always get remembered as a cheat due to his involvement in the Ultimate Bet Poker website scandal.
Welcome to Blackjack
After Hamilton moved to Vegas, he became heavily involved in Blackjack, eventually teaming up with fellow blackjack pros Blair Rodman, Stanford Wong and Fred Davis. These players were not only successful in card counting but great tournaments players as well. Casinos started banning blackjack pros, so Hamilton resumed his poker career in the late 1980s and in 1994, he won the WSOP Main Event etching his name in history after defeating Hugh Vincent. After winning the main event, he received $1 million and his body weight in silver, which was a considerable sum of money, seeing as Hamilton’s a pretty big guy.
Hamilton returned to Blackjack and made a mark on the game by developing “elimination blackjack”, showcased on the Ultimate Blackjack Tour. This event was memorable because it involved several professional poker players who didn’t generally play Blackjack, including Annie Duke, Phil Helmuth, Johnny Chan and Jennifer Tilly.
Ultimate Bet Scandal
Hamilton was a consultant for an online poker site known as Ultimate Bet. Along with other people, he developed a way that allowed them to see their opponent’s hole cards and cost him to lose all the respect he had earned within the blackjack and poker community. Most people maintain Russ Hamilton was the biggest beneficiary in this scam, earning himself a cool $22 million and further adding fuel to the fire. One benefit of online gaming is that ‘it is what it is’ on trusted and respected sites such as gambling360 online casino . So there is no ‘funny business’ that can get around well known sites of this nature. In ‘real life’ you can never quite be sure of whether or not that is the case.
