Another cheating scandal has rocked the world of online poker, as allegations have surfaced that at least one player has cheated while playing at online poker room Ultimate Bet (www.ultimatebet.com).

The new scandal breaks on the heels of the recent Absolute Poker (www.absolutepoker.com) cheating scandal, which saw that online room fined half a million dollars by a regulatory agency after it was revealed the room allowed a player to use special software to cheat and see opponents’ hole cards.

Now it’s Ultimate Bet, whose main spokesman is poker pro Phil “Poker Brat” Hellmuth Jr., that is on the receiving end of allegations it allowed cheating.

In a stunning admission that cheating allegations are now being investigated, Ultimate Bet issued a press release this week that stated:

“On January 12, 2008, Ultimate Bet was alerted to allegations that a player with the online handle ‘NioNio’ exhibited abnormally high winning statistics and was accused of having an unfair advantage during play. These allegations were made both directly to Ultimate Bet by concerned players and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), and indirectly through several web forums. The allegations also included reports of suspicious activity concerning the deletion of the ‘NioNio’ account and other accounts that may have been related to this scheme.

“We immediately launched an extensive inquiry involving an independent third-party expert to review hundreds of thousands of hand histories, all of which were promptly locked down and made available to this expert. The initial findings of our third-party expert confirm that the ‘NioNio’ account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal, and we have expanded the investigation to look into whether an unfair advantage existed, how such a scheme might have been perpetrated and whether additional accounts beyond those of ‘NioNio’ were involved.

“Ultimate Bet is in regular communications and contact with its regulatory authority, the KGC, and will continue to cooperate fully with that body. Ultimate Bet is determined to complete a full and thorough investigation. We pride ourselves on providing a safe, secure playing environment for our customers. The investigation has proven to be extremely complex and, therefore, has been more extensive and taken much longer than initially expected. We continue to aggressively pursue the matter and will communicate the findings of our full investigation to our regulatory authority and to our customer base as soon as practicable.”

Coincidentally, or maybe not, Ultimate Poker and Absolute Poker are run by the same parent company.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)