Am I missing something? Since when does Tapie own FTP and therefore be in line to collect debt directly?

According to his post, they offered him a payment plan that would allow him to do exactly that: only pay if the players were made whole.

It's good to see Barry being transparent in this situation. It is certainly a tough decision to post something like this.

I dont know for sure, but I would think what Ivey and David Benyamine owe FTP, dwarfs what Barry owes by a factor of at least 20. It's too bad some will vilify Barry for coming clean here and still hold Ivey in high regard.

I think Mr.Greenstein has the very best of intentions and will pay back in full the money he borrowed. The reality is that he most likely does'nt have 400k lying around to instantly pay back, and this statement is as much about bying some time as it is doing the right thing.

I fail to understand why he feels U.S. players should take responsibilty over R.O.W players??! However my main concern is the money owed by the other players, Benyamine/Ivey/Lederer/Lingren and such. It seems for the last few years they made more money from endorsing Full Tilt than they did from playing poker. Now that the gravy train has come to a stop I doubt any of them have enough money to pay what they owe.

The CardPlayer article says Ivey $4 million; Benyamine $2 million. (I think that's what it says; it is horribly written).

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...-tilt-millions

None of this matters. If you borrow $100 from your buddy, you don't get to say to him "I'm not repaying it until you pay off your car loan". You owe the money, you pay it when called.

I am so happy that Ivey refuses to say anything, gets to play 250k tournaments, play ultra high stakes in Macau and continue his balling lifestyle while he owes 4 million. Lets hope he doesn't go busto before he has the common sense to pay it back .

Wow that's a quarter of the purchase price no wonder they're going public with this.

Barry doesn't say it in his post, but I'm pretty sure any direct payment to GBT would be conditional on closing of the acquisition.

Everyone who borrowed money from full tilt should return the whole amount now with the condition that it will be used to pay back ALL fulltilt players.

If the deal for fulltilt fails, the players who will still own money to fulltilt MUST give back the money to the players and should not get away with it. So it would be helpful if Subject Poker would publish the pros that own money to fulltilt and the exact amount that they own.

I don't think it is fair to conclude from his comments that Barry doesn't care about the ROW players. He is concerned that by paying all of his debt to GBT, who will only be paying ROW players, that US players will not be getting their portion of what he owes.

FWIW, I think he may be mistaken in this analysis. If he and the other pros, who between them owe between $10M and $20M, fail to pay FTP for the debt, GBT, who is buying FTP assets, are justified in asking for a price reduction equal to the amount of debt not paid. If they don't get it they are justified in walking away from the deal.

That price reduction comes out of what might have been available to pay US players. I would presume that the way Barry is looking at it, he would prefer to pay to the DoJ a portion of his debt equal to the US player portion of all outstanding balances, and pay the rest of the debt to GBT. Even if Barry pays the whole debt to the DoJ, as long as Tapie gets a corresponding price reduction, the same amount of money will be available to the DoJ.

Essentially, as long as the deal goes through, with Tapie paying $80M minus whatever debt pros don't pay, the DoJ will get the same amount of money. So, there appears to be no benefit to US players to Barry and other pros holding out.

However, there is a risk to US players if enough pros hold out and GBT cannnot get an offsetting price reduction. If GBT pulls out of the deal, the DoJ will be the only source of compensation for all player debt - not just US player debt, and they will have less money in their coffers. They won't have the $80M from GBT. They might collect the $40M in the foreign account that the DoJ seems willng to turn over to GBT rather than to litigate to gain forfeiture of it. They might gain some or all of the $10-$20M of pro debt that GBT couldn't get. At best the DoJ will still be $20M short of what they'd have if the deal went through. At worst they'd be $80M short.

If the deal falls through, GBT won't be paying up to $150M for ROW player accounts. If the DoJ is offering remission, ROW players would qualify just as much as US players, (and possibly more - it wasn't illegal for FTP to take their money). This leaves the DoJ on the hook for twice the player debt with $20-$80M less available to cover it. That would seem to cut funds available to US players by more than half. If the deal falls through, US players will only get paid in full if the DoJ has enough money to cover all US and ROW balances without GBT's $20-$80M. I don't think the seized funds add up to this much.

I doubt that Barry's $400K is enough to kill the deal. Perhaps no one player's debt will kill the deal. But the sum total of debt, if not realized by GBT through payment or price reduction, would seem to be enough to kill the deal, and if the deal dies because the pros refuse to pay GBT and GBT isn't compensated for the lost asset, then US players and ROW player both lose. If this happens, every pro who refused to pay will share responsblity for the resulting player losses.

Having said all that, as long as GBT can get a price reduction for unpaid debts, then there is a potential upside to US players in what Barry is doing. Money that the DoJ gets from GBT for FTP assets is not guaranteed to be available to compensate players. Money paid into a fund set up for compensating US players is pretty well guaranteed to go to players.

It would seem the best solution for all parites involved (except perhaps the DoJ's coffers) would be for the DoJ to allow pros who owe money to FTP to make a contribution of the amount owing to a player compensation fund, in return for discharge for the debt, and to allow GBT to reduce the price they pay by the amount of the pros' debts. IDK if this is legal, but if it is, it would seem to satisfy all the stated concerns.

good pr barry, some actuelly thinking you are putting the interest of the ftp players
at the same level as yours, the other pros/owners/scammers should watch and learn, nice play...

props to barry for stating his intentions/actions publicly.

the stonewalling is getting kind of old from other people involved in this.

and lol at everyone putting PR motives etc at the back of his actions, some people just bitch
and moan, no matter what people do.. if you stay silent you're scum, if you talk you're just doing
it for PR and you're a phony. tough life.

In before, and after, horrible analogies.

i think barrys point of view is lol

if all the people who owed FTP money took that point of view then we will never get anywhere.

pay the company their money

I forgot to add that you completely missed this part of BG's post.

This is where we are now.

With all due respect to the people that are gathering info on what's going on... The DOJ has not even come forward to publicly confirm that there is a deal in the works let alone who the investor is. Everything we've heard has only been attributed to either FTP or GBT. Greenstein is not a party to any of the deals and would be as clueless as the rest of us as to what's going on.

Even if we believe all the reports it seems as if the deal has not yet been completed and that GBT has not taken ownership of FTP. I haven't seen any reports that FTP has already forfeited their assets and GBT has paid the DOJ for those assets.

So why should BG be considering cutting a check to GBT?

If you owed your cell phone company money and I told you I was about to buy the company and asked you to pay me your debt directly would you?

you owe money. Pay it back. Stop trying to squirm away from it like a stinking rat
one of FTP's assets is the money owed to it by third parties such as yourself. If the assets end up owned by Tapie Group, then YOU OWE THEM this money, so pay it up now and stop pretending to be a saint

is this debt accruing interest?

also, what baluga said is about all that needs to be said.

Until Tapie owns FTP and it's assets I don't see why he would pay Tapie.

I'm seriously getting sick of all the 'compliments' people give barry for responding on this forum so quickly. Its a moral obligation towards the players, nothing more. Only if barry would have posted about his debts alot ealier, you should have been thankfull to him.
So barry's been posting this for the wrong reasons, reputation.

For all the reasons mentioned in this thread allready, barry should pay up. Although i still think he has good intentions, his reasoning is flawed.

Can you believe that the only reason i chose FTP rather then Pokerstars was because IVEY played there?! What a bad beat that was.

Have Durrrr or any other pros stated what they plan to do about the owed funds yet?

I am astonished by all the Barry-love here.

The guy borrowed money, held the debt for years, and now refuses to pay it back. His excuse is that he doesn't like the way the debtor (first FT, soon-to-be Tapie Group) may use the money. That's absurd! Pay back the money you owe!

Analogy: I owe SpanAir Money (airline just went broke). Bankruptcy judge says "pay up." I say "no, because the money might not go to flight attendants stiffed on last week pay." BS. Pay your debt.

+1

Barry borrowed this money years and years ago and he still has not paid it back to this day. What makes everyone think he has the intentions to pay it back now. If he had intentions to pay it back it would of been paid back long time ago

Barry G is the man

If only Ivey and co would do the same, we could start putting this mess behind us. Where are you, Ivey?