Also posted at LVA - reposting here as a courtesy to all:
Well, everyone has been strangely quiet since the above post appeared (NOTE: referring to Joep's posting of Russ Hamilton's email), so I'll put my own thoughts up.
Congratulations in a big way to Russ for finally stepping up and addressing this unfortunate situation. Somebody from UBT's front office needed to do or say something in an official capacity, and it's obvious that Russ' words have calmed the waters. A sincere thanks to Joe for posting it.
IMHO, there are at least 3 points that need to be addressed. Since neither Deb nor I were personally involved (other than being appalled at how the whole thing went down), one can be assured that there's no "agenda" behind these.
1. He mentions that no one will be harmed financially by this, presumably meaning the TOC cancellation/postponement. Does this include those who had already laid out $$$ for TOC-related travel costs that are not refundable through the merchant from which they were obtained?
2. There has been mention of future plans and changes for UBT-related activities in the future, including the claim that the TOC wasn't canceled, merely rescheduled. That sounds great, but (and forgive me for sounding flippant here) that is asking the TBJ community to trust in these promises, and that kind of trust hasn't exactly been earned by recent events. Certainly the UBT cannot "drop their pants" and tell everything that is cooking due to ongoing negotiations, but a few scraps of news regarding future plans would be quite helpful.
3. This is likely something that will never be publicly released, but it would go a long ways toward rebuilding trust in the UBT by the TBJ public at large. Has the person who won the TOC final table seat in the Club's online tournament been officially informed of the recent developments? I cannot forget how devastated Deb was when she was informed that her hard-won Aruba adventure had been canceled, and that was peanuts compared to losing a final table seat for $1 million. Also, how will UBT compensate that person for the loss? Had I managed to finish off my run for that seat and was later offered $10,000 for it, there's no way I'd have found that acceptable. Offering $10K to those who had earned or paid for an entry into the TOC is the right thing to do, but the online champion earned a spot at the final table, not just an entry into the tournament itself. That seat had an EV of over $140K.
I'll say again that it was simply excellent to see something from Russ that addressed the situation, and hope that I speak for the majority here by saying that we are eagerly anticipating the release of the promised future news. I want UBT to flourish. And, even though we aren't permitted to play, I also want the Club to succeed. With other recent bad news in the TBJ community, we need something positive to act as a beacon for other TBJ events, not unlike the WSOP's acting as a catalyst for the entire poker community in the post-Moneymaker era. There's a lot more riding on UBT's shoulders than simply the UBT itself.
