Ultimate Bet Poker is a poker website frequented by hundreds of thousands of poker players each month. The company just announced a rebranding effort, and the website will now be known as UB Poker. Site users had long referred to the company as “UB,” so it made sense to rebrand.

Along with the newly minted brand, the company has also begun using its recently acquired domain name, UB.com. Up until the end of July, the domain name was owned by a private domain investment company.

Users can still log in via UltimateBet.com, which surprisingly (surprising to me) doesn’t forward to the new url, although the new logo reflects the acquisition and rebranding effort. When you search Google and Yahoo for “Ultimate Bet,” the domain name that has been in use for years is the number one result rather than UB.com.

The acquisition price for UB.com was not made public by the company, but knowing the domain owner, it was not cheap!

Update: An unconfirmed rumor has it the name sold for around half a million dollars.

You may have noticed the new banner on my blog advertising the upcoming two character .Biz domain name auctions. In total, there will be over 1,000 two letter and number .biz combination domain names auctioned over the next several weeks, including domain names such as PC.biz, We.biz, Yo.biz, He.biz, and many more. This is one of the first times companies and domain investors have the opportunity to bid on these two character domain names.

Recently, it was announced that O.biz would be developed by Overstock.com, and their newly launched website sells mostly restaurant, office, and hotel products, with a focus on small businesses and consumers looking to buy in bulk at greater discounts than are found on the Overstock.com website.

In addition, many single character .Biz domain names were auctioned with some strong results as reported by Andrew at Domain Name Wire:

1.biz $32,003
2.biz $5,801
4.biz $7,601
5.biz $6,100
6.biz $8,100
7.biz $7,877
8.biz $8,200
9.biz $7,901
a.biz $10,099
b.biz $10,005
c.biz $8,988
d.biz $26,110
e.biz $63,001
f.biz $8,250
g.biz $9,400
h.biz $5,300
j.biz $8,250
k.biz $6,900
l.biz $5,000
m.biz $15,611
n.biz $8,001
p.biz $7,878
r.biz $8,855
s.biz $8,211
t.biz $7,602
u.biz $10,009
v.biz $6,100
w.biz $13,500
x.biz $10,099
y.biz $8,988
z.biz $8,988

In order to bid on the two character .biz auctions, you need to register in advance, which you can do on the auction website. The auctions begin very soon and run from November 30 – February 25.