The last thing online poker needs at the moment is losing players in the overall pool, this is all very bad news no matter where in the world you are located to play.

I'd say its the opposite. Certainly not the direction the industry is going. Can't think of a single jurisdiction on the horizon that will have a segregated player pool. Not netherlands, UK, portugal, Germany. Maybe California, but even progress is being made there.

Italy?

Yes, Italy, Spain and France have segregated player pools. There is some progress towards these markets re-opening. All subsequent regulatory changes (bulgaria, estonia, belgium, denmark) did not make the same mistake. Nor will any others i know on the horizon (UK, portugal, netherlands). The industry is moving in the other direction. In five years time, there will be less segregation, not more.

France isn't even properly segregated, pretty much anyone can play on the french sites.

I hope you're right

He is right. This was a specific topic on the pokercast a while ago (when the idea of Italy and France being brought back into the general player pool was tossed around). The Pokerstars rep made it clear that part of the process with new countries was learning from the old ones, and segregation in general is not a good idea.

Other than Greece who has a taxation policy that defies reality, all the other countries have pretty much stayed with the whole player pool, though player transfers to some are not possible.

What is happening in New Jersey and Nevada help show why segregation is not the best solution. No doubt it may happen with other countries, but the trend seems to be against that.

I feel confident that a few years from now the industry will be in a much better and healthier and stable place, but it definitely will be a roller coaster (starting with UIGA/ Black Friday) to get there.

Same in Spain, at least in terms of the law - players from anywhere can play on a dot-ES (or dot-FR) site; just means more money for the taxman (the sites themselves might have their own restrictions). Only in Italy do the regulations stipulate that only Italian citizens can play.

afaik we cant play on .es or .it sites, even from Europen countries...

Yes I don't believe .es is open to EU residents like .fr. I think .es is very similar to .it in this respect

I think the ones who rejected segregation are all tiny countries that anybody that understands liquidity would know that the sites would be ghost towns with a couple of full ring/short table games going in the evening per lower level. The other countries in theory can have their own site because they could have many games going because they are 10 times the size of these other countries. We will see if saner heads prevail. I have no hope for somebody that understands online poker making these decisions as in the past bean counters that don't care if play the lotto or understand triple range merging have made these decisions.

For some reason the countries that went for segregation, or partial segregation like france were the big "fish" countries. The countries with all the losing players.

Seems bizarre but that's true, and there must be some reason for that. Anyone who played with French and Italians when they were in the .com pool knows what I mean

Its the "wealth of chips", just natural economic law as per smith/nash. When you skillfully lose a dollar from your economy (to another country) it hurts far more than a dollar lost within your economy. The same applies to raked monies of course.

But if we follow the logic further, knowing that free markets are ideal for intellectual and creative growth and capitalistic expansion, those countries that are "free-est" (not in the American sense of the word) will also generally contain the "brightest" minds.

The problem is worse when some countries have different factions of their governing system competing against each other in "unnatural" ways.

Yes I totally agree. This is how I figured it back in 08 or whenever it was Italy became segregated. I mean when all the figures were laid out on the table for the Italian regulators to see they probably just decided there was too much money leaving Italy and going to other countries (for several reasons) from online poker and just decided to keep everything within their borders.

No, from a regulatory standpoint Spain is like France. In fact it is even more open - Spanish law does not dictate players must have a European bank account.

The poker operators themselves mostly chose not to allow non-Spanish. This was them learning from their mistakes in France, allowing non-French to play. Much too costly.

At launch PS locked it down to Spanish residents only (you have to maintain a residence in Spain but you can play from outside). 888 was open to all, but they locked it down after a few months. party was open to all, not sure if they eventually locked it down.

The UK is pretty big.

They just need to look at the declining tax receipts from online poker.

I'm not just making this up. Everything on the horizon has open player pools - UK, Netherlands, Portugal. The regulations or drafts are published. Meanwhile, shared liquidity between ES/IT/FR and beyond is frequently discussed at regulatory meetings, i still have hope for ES and IT at least to combine.

It's unquestionably moving towards a more open player pool.

The UK?

Rich countries regulated first, had more tax incentive to keep money within the borders. Rich countries = more/bigger fish.

Medium country compared to how big Italy and France were donating in 08/09 when they got segregated. Not even close.

And this is interesting thanks, never knew that.

most operators are the same right?

Stars for example, so why do they allow non french on their french site and do not allow non spanish in their spanish site?

I speculate that it was a mistake they learned from.

6 month old article though.

but again, spanish legislation (and its decisions, not having non-spanish player for example) came later then french one, so...