Video Description: Scott Bell's Ultimate Beat - Too Much To Lose, the new documentary about the Ultimate Bet cheating scandal available on Vimeo, is a sad case of a good story badly told.
There is a great documentary to be made about how one of the largest online
poker rooms cheated their own customers out of millions of dollars, and, watching the interviews,
you get the sense that Bell may even have the material to make that documentary, if only he knew how to structure it.
As it is, the movie consists of a ninety minute barrage of facts and figures thrown
mercilessly at a defenseless viewer, who is bound to lose track of too many names, too many companies and too many financial constructs. It also requires a lot of pre-existing knowledge: it assumes you know who Ted Forrest is or who Freddy Deeb is or what the 2006 Port Act has to do with online poker, as those are mentioned without much introduction or clarification.
The film also lacks emotion: people's lives have been ruined by this, people have lost
everything because they were cheated, but the movie never gives you a sense of the personal
damage being done to the players and remains about as emotionally engaging as a Wall Street Journal financial report.