Surprisingly, Full Tilt Red Pros will get paid by US DOJ

The US Department of Justice sure gave former Full Tilt "Red" Pros a scare regarding their Black Friday payments. The US DOJ originally decided that Red Pros would not be reimbursed, however, they've since had a change of heart.

The Garden City Group (GCG), which is tasked with handling claims for Black Friday repayments, announced that "professional players" can submit a claim by September 3rd to "recover the portion of their account balance that is not attributable to compensation provided by FTP or Affiliate revenue."

What will Red Pros get back?

While former FTP pros won't get any sponsorship or affiliate money, they are eligible for remission on their poker profits and rakeback. The latter is not identified by the DOJ as personal compensation, so that's why rakeback is considered part of the remission process. However, some players have been forced to fight for their rakeback because it was mislabeled by FTP before the old site went offline.

Who were the Full Tilt Red Pros?

Red Pros were not among the full-fledged Full Tilt Pros, nor did they have any say in how the pre-Black Friday poker site was run. Instead, they wore patches at live tournaments, got very generous rakeback deals and sometimes received hourly wages.

At its height, FTP had over 160 Red pros on their roster. Obviously we're not going to list every singe former Red Pro, however, some of the more notable ones included Annette Obrestad, Brad Booth, Brian Townsend, Carlos Mortensen, Eli Elezra, Huck Seed, Jeff Madsen, Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi and Roland de Wolfe.

Some of these players are still very active on the live tournament scene, while others don't play as much because they can't afford the traveling costs/buy-ins without a sponsorship. But whatever the case may be, they've all got to be happy that they're being added to the remission process.