Looks like the Full Tilt Poker press release writer got a new job working for the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. The following was the press release sent out by the KGC on Friday: "Since the actions taken by the US Attorney'€™s Office for the Southern District of New York (the SDNY€) on April 15, 2011, the Commission has been in close and regular discussions with its licensee, Blanca Games Inc. (Blanca€), operating as Absolute Poker and UB. com (€œAP/UB€), to facilitate the reimbursement of both US and non-US players.

The hammer has fallen on UB's roster of sponsored pros. Blanca Gaming released a statement saying that "Blanca’s executive management team today informed its roster of sponsored pros that, in accordance with the provisions of their agreements, their contracts have been terminated. " According to the press release: "The full list of affected pros is as follows: Joe Sebok, Prahlad Friedman, Eric “Basebaldy” Baldwin, Maria Ho, Brandon Cantu, Tiffany Michelle, Scott Ian, “Hollywood” Dave Stann, Adam “Roothlus” Levy, Bryan Devonshire and Trishelle Cannatella. " I seriously doubt anyone is surprised at this.

Daniel Negreanu posted a blog on Saturday where he essentially called out the poker community as a whole for not blackballing UltimateBet (now UB and Absolute Poker) over the whole cheating scandal. Now it appears the companies are going to cut and run and he says that the community as a whole is at fault. I'm not going to disagree with Daniel's take on this as it always seemed odd to me how the company stayed in business. And it wasn't like there were other issues outside of the cheating scandal.

Off in the distance, you can hear it. A faint cry that is getting louder as time passes. If you're playing on Cereus, it's getting louder by the day. "Bring out your dead!" [youtube]http://www.

There is a really good chance that I am going to be wrong about the amount of time it will take players to get their money back from Full Tilt and PokerStars. As I discussed in my last blog, PokerStars is currently processing withdrawals from US players and there are reports from all over the US of players getting their funds back already. Now it appears that Full Tilt is ready to pay back funds. Earlier in the week, Full Tilt released an FAQ for US players saying that an announcement would be made regarding payouts later this week.

Cake Poker announced on Thursday that they had entered a "strategic partnership" with PokerListings. com. The translation for those of you that don't speak poker business speak is that the Cake Poker Network was sold to PokerListings. VictoryPoker.

Coming in at #15 on the list of the "20 Most Influential People in Poker" is the man most synonymous with the World Series of Poker. He is also the one poker player that everyone loves to hate. Yes, #15 on the list is none other than Phil Hellmuth. [assets/Uploads/Blog/Hellmuth-15.

As most of you know, Prahlad Friedman (aka #AssClown to @AsianSpa) recently signed with UB amid a flurry of controversy.   Now, someone has taken to the Youtube airways with their own Prahlad Friedman "beatdown video" entitled "Black and Yellow. " All I am going to say is that this is an EPIC WIN of a video: [youtube]http://www. youtube.

Prahlad Friedman has officially signed as a UB sponsored pro. The announcement was made on UB's blog earlier today with a video of Friedman pointing out that he is joining the "new UB. "[assets/Uploads/Blog/Ted-Dibiase. jpg]Among the initial reaction were cries of "sellout" from both fans and pros.

Unless you have been living under a rock, or trapped in an airport over the holidays, you know that Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth have both left UB.   When Hellmuth's departure was announced on December 30th, UB also hinted that new pros would be added to the roster.   Later that night, Allen Kessler pointed out on twitter that Annie Duke's bio page now had Prahlad's Friedman's name on it.   Here is a shot of the page: With that, everyone has assumed that Friedman has indeed signed a deal with UB.