I'm late to the party and this is a bit off my brand, but here's a thread I think poker players might find very interesting. Especially @Joeingram1 .

I don't think this connection has been mentioned before.

Thread:

Back in 2005-06, I was involved with a product called the Ultimate Blackjack Tour (UBT). It was an innovative, elimination-style Blackjack tournament. They filmed two seasons which aired on CBS at some odd hours.

I had a relatively minor investment in the project.

It was a collection of BJ players and poker players (most were also investors) that made up the first season. They held some play-in tournaments out at Lake Las Vegas.

The winners of those play-in tournaments made up the final tables that would be broadcast on CBS.

Each televised tournament featured an internet qualifier. That was the real money-making component of all this. An online real-money site where people could play UBT.

This was just before the UIGEA was passed. Internet gaming still looked relatively easy.

UIGEA killed UBT.

For Season One, they didn't have the internet site up yet, so one of the producers hand-picked the "winning internet qualifier" for each of the televised tournaments. They were all close friends of his.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed that the internet qualifier for Episode 109 on the DVD (which I believe aired on 9/16/06) was Mike Postle.

For the non-poker players who made it this far, he's the alleged suspect of the biggest poker cheating case in years.

Ok, so big deal. The guy made it onto a televised BJ tournament 14 yrs ago.

The big deal is who his producer friend was that got him on the show:

Russ Hamilton

The inventor of Elimination Blackjack and the mastermind of poker's previous biggest cheating case.