So now it is law, and basically all states have a law that online poker is illegal. But people are saying this is not conform with EU law.

I have no clue what this means. Does anyone have a reference to the actual text of the new law?

I'm not sure about Canada preventing Canadians from playing on offshore sites. Canada's gambling isn't centralised, it's run by the provinces (states). There's basically a provincial lottery organisation which runs the lotteries, sports betting, casinos, and is recently starting with online gambling. 2 provinces have created online poker rooms (and I think they share their player pools). On a Friday night though, I see 840 people online (on other days it's around 200), so it's clear Canadians couldn't give a rats a** about government poker.

The reason PokerStars is excluding Spanish, French, Italian, etc. players is because they have licences to have a poker room in that specific country. Provinces would never grant such a licence to anyone because being the greedy c***s that they are, they want all the profit to themselves (they also sell us alcohol in government stores, not private liquor stores). So, without providing real regulation to licence bookmakers/poker rooms to open up shop in the individual provinces, and not even having the resources in my opinion to go after any big site and take them down (and I doubt they have the power to tell banks not to do business with XYZ company), I don't think what's happening in many countries will happen to Canada.

Like another poster in this thread said, poker being illegal in a country isn't bad. It doesn't mean sites like Stars can't operate there, but when countries start regulating it themselves and giving licences to these operators to operate WITHIN their countries, that's when we have to worry about segregated pools.

Lol wp. I however don't understand how Russians think and have a terrible time adjusting to them for that reason. Their play just defies all logic to me . Germans tend to be pretty good obv.

/OT

This thread is still going? As everyone already knows in the german poker community even if one day we get a regulated market we can still play with international players. The thread on ps.com (biggest german community) doesn't even get much attention, its not even news-worthy. This thread here is more active lol.
Response from Pokerstars:

push

Glad info is still being updated itt, thanks Cola20

German player contribute so much to the poker comunity that it would be a massive dent in the amount of players able to play. I hope it will never come to this as it seems to be coming more and more frequent.

I play Germans all the time and i know the poker comunity would suffer because of it. However if the law is passed then perhaps more people will feel comfortable to play in Germany and it could turn the other way.

Lets hope it goes through ok and other countrys who r tax crazy at the moment don't jump on the band waggon too!

inb4 unbeatable pokerstars.de rake
when should we expect it to be introduced?

Wishfull thinking.

hmmm never? they're not trying to regulate poker, they're trying to make it illegal (which already is)

The German government just wants money obviously and since they can't profit from sites like pokerstars they want to ban them in Germany. I thought they would just ban them all and then introduce they're own stupid networks with ridiculous rake. This quote is interesting though :

"According to this law online poker
websites like PokerStars can apply for and ultimately obtain a
German licence (since 01.03.2012). PokerStars is just in the
process to apply for such a license. With the license, PokerStars
will be operating a .DE domain in the future."

Either way, pokerstars.de or not, the rake will be a lot higher for Germans.
(and i will never be able to get past the micros lol)

If it is the same player pool as the rest of the world (minus the segregated ones obv), how can the rake be higher? Can someone clarify that for me?

To answer your question generally: Sites that are on the international player pool often have reduced rewards in order to effectively raise the rake. You will see this on PokerStars.DK and PokerStars.BE, for example.

Specifically to Germany: if some poker licenses in S:H were issued, then you would have a 20% tax on GGR and things would be probably comparable to Danish rooms.

These days this is looking less likely though.

You should have doubts. There may not be an EU in the future.

Cola20 might be right! i hope not! Why can't we go back to what it was in the glory days. So guttered i missed them! sounds amazing.

There are too many benifits of being in the EU! It wont fail any time soon!

However if there was a EU site that would almost deffo mean new general rules on tax and **** which sucks! You wouldn't get taxed in the bookies so why should we!