Late last week, Juicy Stakes Poker management sent an e-mail to its customers announcing that it has been acquired by Zagox Management N.V. Zagox, “a serious partner for all types of online gaming,” according to the e-mail, has already taken over the operation of the site.
Poker players are hopeful that this will begin a turnaround for Juicy Stakes, whose reputation has plummeted this year. A member of the Revolution Gaming Network, Juicy Stakes has been known of late as a total loser of a site. In July, PokerAffiliateSolutions.com rated Juicy Stakes at the bottom of the barrel for cashout speed, giving it a grade of “F.”
As a result of the terrible cashout process on Juicy Stakes and other rooms on the Revolution Gaming Network, the network has seen a rise in chip dumping as players with funds stuck on one poor room purposely lose chips to a friend on a more reputable room on the same network. This has particularly affected Intertops Poker, one of the most respected poker rooms around (it received an “A” grade from Poker Affiliate Solutions). In late July, Intertops announced that it would review all wins at cash game tables before crediting funds to player accounts.
In August, Intertops took things a step further, segregating many of its tables from the rest of the network. It was so fed up with Revolution Gaming that it was doing everything it could to put distance between itself and the network, short of leaving altogether.
With the change in ownership of Juicy Stakes, Intertops has said that it will now allow its players to share the same tables with players at Juicy Stakes, an excellent sign for the struggling site.
For its part, Juicy Stakes says that it is committed to “providing the service and support that everyone deserves.”
Any pending cashouts at the time of the acquisition were cancelled and will need to be requested again. In the e-mail to players, the poker room promised that new cashouts will be processed according to the timeframe offered on the cashier page. All pending bonuses were also cancelled, to be replaced by a new reload bonus.
Of course, players who lost those bonuses won’t be happy, but Juicy Stakes wrote, “We would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but stress that these changes will allow us to start paying your winnings in a very timely manner, thus improving your gaming experience at Juicy Stakes!”
The new management isn’t stupid, though, and knows that it will be difficult to handle mass cashouts. As such, it is limiting withdrawals to $1,000 per week for the time being. It is also incentivizing players to keep money on the site by waiving withdrawal fees for anyone who pays at least $25 in rake after October 14th.
Additionally, player-to-player transfers are shut down for now and tournament tickets have been converted to cash.
