Quote Originally Posted by JimAfternoon View Post
I think the evidence strongly suggests that Juicy was basically given to Intertops, most likely because they owed Intertops many months worth of reconciliation payments and they were broke. This all occurred when the network had finally been decimated by Lock Poker and everything went to shit.

IIRC, Intertops took over the Juicy skin and started honoring cashouts again (Juicy hadn't been paying for several months before the takeover), but cashouts were limited to maybe 1k and there was a pretty sizeable fee. It wasn't great, but it was a pretty huge turnaround considering.

Intertops is probably just unwilling to lose any more money here than they already have. It's a shitty situation, but at least somewhat understandable. Intertops was the only honest and reputable operator on Revolution and they got pwned hard getting involved with the other jackass skins. The network remains in shambles and it's probably impossible for them to ever recoup what's owed. They are probably just unwilling (or unable) to eat another 300k loss at this time. I do feel like they would probably uphold their end of the bargain however if the guy was to play a bit and help generate some action, as they are otherwise a pretty decent outfit with a really good rep.

But who knows, maybe things are just really, really bad. I've heard reports that Lock owes upwards of 10M to these other operators and Intertops could have really taken it on the chin.
If this is the case, Intertops should have been honest about this at the time of the Juicy Stakes takeover.

I thought they handled themselves very respectably during the Lock debacle, but that's no excuse to be shady right now.

If they really acquired Juicy Stakes for nothing and now are trying to find a way to make good on the former owner's debts while not costing themselves too much, they need to be honest about it, and they should have been honest from the start. As soon as they bought it, there should have been an e-mail to all players with large balances (at least ones they felt they would require playthrough to honor) explaining the situation.

A letter like this (at the time Juicy Stakes was acquired -- not when people try to cash out) would have been appropriate:

Dear XXXXX,

We have taken over the troubled Juicy Stakes Poker site from the previous owners, who were unable to meet their obligations to the network.

We are aware that you currently have a balance on this site, and will attempt to work with you in order to come up with a mutually beneficial solution.

We have established that you must rake 2500 FPPs per $1000 withdrawal. We would never place such a requirement on players who deposited to our Intertops site, as integrity and safety of your money has been of the utmost importance to us in our nearly 20 years of operation. However, we have simply taken over an unfortunate situation from another company, in an attempt to rescue both the site and the players owed money there. While we would love to pay out the balances of every Juicy Stakes account with no restriction, we simply cannot absorb the losses and mismanagement of the prior owners. At the moment we are not looking to profit from Juicy Stakes, but rather to rescue it from its massive debt.

If you do not find this policy acceptable, please let us know, and we will remove your balance from the system and provide you with the information on the previous owners, from whom you can attempt to collect.

Thank you for your understanding.

Intertops, new owners of Juicy Stakes
While this letter would still piss some people off, it would be understandable. If Intertops is treating Juicy Stakes as a reclamation project, and are not currently making money from it, players would be more understanding about their intentions.

Right now they are looking rather shady, as they're saying nothing to anyone (hoping they keep playing) and only dropping the bad news on them when they attempt to withdraw.