Russ Hamilton - the Inventor of Elimination Blackjack

Speaking about Elimination Blackjack, it is impossible to stay silent about the name of the person who, actually, invented this card game and became a founder of the Ultimate Blackjack Tour in 2005. The name of this person is Russ Hamilton, professional best poker player from Las Vegas, Nevada, a former electrical engineer, a consultant of Ultimate Bet (online poker server) and an expert of gaming.

Once upon a time….

Russ lived happily and studied at the university to become an engineer when suddenly understood that poker could bring him much more money than engineering could. So, he became the champion of World Series of Poker in 1994 and received his WSOP bracelet.

After his winning $1 million at World Series, Russ worked at Ultimate Bet as a consultant. Ultimate Bet is one of two on-line poker servers (the second one is Absolute Poker) which belongs to Tokwiro Enterprises and was licensed by Kahnawake Gaming Commission (this commission is responsible for giving licenses to many on-line casinos and on-line poker rooms).

In 2008 Hamilton was involved in the big cheating scandal: the commission determined him to be responsible for cheating players of Ultimate Bet by using special software that helped to find out an opponent’s cards. As a result of such a cheating, players of Ultimate Bet had lost in about $ 6 million between 2004 and 2008 years.

That scheme was noticed by some on-line players and that fact forced Ultimate Bet to do the investigation where the name of Russ Hamilton came to light. The Ultimate Bet company had to return almost all the money to players and pay a fine of $ 1,5 million as well as remove all its suspected employees from the site.

Where the story ends…

Today Russ Hamilton has more than $1,5 million of his money and almost all of them (in about $1,3 million) he won out of World Series of Poker.