New CEREUS Features Unveiled

When the poker world woke up on Tuesday morning, the player bases of online poker rooms Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker had been merged to form CEREUS. As of 12:30pm ET, over 17,000 players were seated at tables on the new network, manifesting the higher player counts that customers can expect to see in the future.

Users of Ultimate Bet or Absolute Poker will need to download the newest version of the software in order to experience CEREUS. The update runs automatically when the program is opened and takes about two minutes to install. A noticeable difference for users of CEREUS concerns the main lobby. On Ultimate Bet, users can now filter the lobby by game type, including the maximum number of players, table speed, and stakes. Checking and un-checking options placed next to each category filter will change the lobby’s contents accordingly. The filtering option is also available on Absolute Poker when viewing Hold’em cash games and tournaments. The lobby also groups tables with similar stakes together and colors them the same, making the process of finding a table much easier.

Players who wish to make deals at the final table of a high-stakes tournament are now able to do so. When customers first log onto a table, they’re now given the choice of the “Top View” or “Classic View” on Ultimate Bet. On Absolute Poker, players are actually given a third view to select from, “Quarter View,” which is very similar to UB’s “Classic View.”

A timer appears when it is a player’s turn to act, which is a new feature for those customers who regularly hit the virtual felts on Ultimate Bet. CEREUS has made vast improvements to hand histories, including the ability to review the most recent hands played, save the information to your computer, or request that it be e-mailed to you. In addition, hand histories can be filtered by the hand number, table played, hole cards, the hand’s winner, and pot size. Hands that you have won are listed in red. Absolute Poker’s feature list notes that the previous 200 hands are reviewable.

Players can instantly replay hands. In the Ultimate Bet software, players can click on “Replay” from the table. The feature shows a visual representation of the previous hands played. Rather than review hand histories to uncover what cards opponents held, they are given face up in the replayer. Keeping this window open in the background of a single cash game table provides a seamless way to review past hands. In addition, another brand new feature to CEREUS involves the “rabbit cam,” which shows you what cards would have come in previous hands that were not played to a showdown. The rabbit cards are appropriately displayed with a picture of a rabbit holding the final card or cards.

Customization is also a major component of CEREUS. Players can now select from various table skins on both Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. In addition, the ability to upload a personalized rectangular-shaped avatar is also possible. However, players may only upload an avatar once. In addition, players are now able to create private tournaments. Ultimate Bet’s CEREUS features literature explains, “As an Ultimate Icon or Ultimate Legend, you will now be able to create private tournament groups and join up to four other private tournament groups.”

In a press release distributed by Ultimate Bet’s parent company on Tuesday, Tokwiro COO Paul Leggett commented, “We are dedicated to providing the ultimate online experience and with CEREUS we offer real value for every dollar our players put on the table. Our unwavering commitment to security and fair play [is] the foundation of the new network.” A renewed focus on security has also become a central part of CEREUS, as both of its member sites, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, have been bogged down by high-profile cheating scandals over the past year.

Ultimate Bet also added that, with the formation of CEREUS, the network has become “one of the top three largest online poker communities.” PokerScout, which tracks traffic on online poker rooms, had not yet posted average traffic figures for CEREUS. Currently, PokerStars ranks as the busiest online poker room or network at 24,846 cash game players. Behind it is Full Tilt Poker, which is at 9,241.

Visit Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker to learn more about the features available on each site.