https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/...pool-25973.htm

maybe USA will follow lol

Finally learning.

hopefully italy will follow.

Per favore

maybe USA will follow lol[/QUOTE]

Lol

Excellent news. If i get this right France will share the pool w/ italy, spain and portugal? This is like christmas.

Best news in a long time.

Great news

Awesome news indeed. Let's hope for the best.

Their primary problem is taxing pre-flop winnings which leads to overall rake being far too high. They will continue to fail until they change this.

Unfortunately, this article does not paint an accurate picture of the situation.

- This is an expected procedural step in a process that has spanned six months. It passed the Senate in May, then submitted to the EC, which it cleared last month, then it was back to the Senate, which it cleared last week (as expected). Now it's off for a signature in the next two weeks... ever since May, this has been the expected process.

- The suggestion that the country "is set to moved to shared liquidity" certainly overstates things. This removes the legal barrier France had in joining a pan-European player pool for cash games, in theory, pending regulatory approval.

- The meetings in Paris referenced in the PokerNews article were the same bi-annual regulators jollys that they've been having for the last three or four years. Shared liquidity is always discussed, nothing concrete happens.

The next step - and the major hurdle - is bilateral agreements between the regulators. There are major issues of parity between Spain, France and Italy. In particular, France has a tax of 2% on all pots, which is seen as incompatible with the GGR tax of Spain (25%) and Italy (20%). This has to be resolved before there's any forward momentum. And now there's Portugal thrown into the mix, which is a year behind on its own licensing, and the expectation is still a UK model...

S, the situation is certainly messy. France's situation is about to become a little less messy. But that's about it.

Indeed, Spain and Italy have seemed like much better fits and there's no legal barriers in their way, and the regulators have been discussing it for years, but so far nada.

Hopefully i'm wrong and this does happen in 2017, but i'm not confident.

Thanks Buzz Killington

It already has been the case. EU, not Europe. It is up to other eu countries to integrate. Spain, portugal, and maybe Germany, even Uk because they were talking about this. And some segregated and possibly even .com eu like romania and so on, and maybe .eu countries.

And this is just bullpoop. Preflop was raked for a short while when .fr launched. Like 6 years ago.

learn to read

preflop is still taxed so postflop rake has to be extra high to cover sites for paying the tax on preflop pots.

What do you mean taxed? Thought you just ment rake sry my bad. I just play and dont pay any taxes. Benefits living in Finland.

A couple of questions for Hood.

1. Shouldn't it be easy for countries to merge their tournament pools? Seems far easier to implement to me.

2. From your writings, I come to understand that after the regulators reach some sort of preliminary agreement, they either have to find a software implementation that allows the games to be taxed according to each country's legislation or for legislation to change in each country so as to be harmonized with the integrated pool.

Has there been any sounding for such a legislative change in the case of France? I mean since they are losing expected income that should be the next step, no?

Two questions:

Currently, everyone with a European bank account can play on Winamax and Starsfr, used to also be able on ipoker.fr, and can't on Party/PMU/whatever else there is. So, if this happens:

1) If the joint network will be, say, France+Italy+Spain (or whatever countries) what will happen to us with .fr account registered from other countries? Will they kick us out?

2) On the opposite side of the spectrum, does this mean that also smaller networks that are currently only accepting French players such as PMU, ipoker and so on will open for all euros?

Merci!

They're talking about the gaming tax that the operator has to pay. In France, it is calculated at 2% of the total bet, which might be fine for most games but in cash that's raking the pot, even when there's no flop. In every other jurisdiction in the world, it is based on gaming revenue (so for poker, a percentage of the rake collected from the pot. No flop, no drop, no tax to pay).

Yes, I should think so. Unfortunately, the approved French law pertains to cash games only (for those interested check the law here, Article 95, it talks only about "jeux de cercle.") I've no idea why.

Honestly I don't really know what the practical next steps are. It seems quite feasible to harmonize different tax rates when they are based on revenue; you attribute a certain amount to a player and based on their jurisdiction, and pay that to the relevant authorities. That works fine with Belgium, Denmark, UK etc on the global player pool. So I see no reason why Spain and Italy couldn't combine. But how would you marry this the French system?

ARJEL has supported a tax change in the past and previous annual statements have been very clear that the ridiculous system is resulting a failing industry, and falling tax revenue.

I want to say that tax changes were proposed and rejected in the last two years, but I can't find an authoritative source right now.

And, worth noting, with Spain too, at least under Spanish regulation this is permitted. For the first year, anyone could sign up to PokerStars.ES and 888.ES; the operators themselves realized this was ruining the player pool ecology and locked them out. I'm surprised PokerStars still permits it in France to be honest.

Good question ... and i can only answer with more questions Firstly, how does this even work with the regulations. Can the Italian system, which is limited strictly to Italian citizens, share a player pool with France, which allows anyone with an EU bank account? And with Spain, which is open to the whole world? Presumably the reason why the Italian system is so locked down is due to monitoring problem gambling, money laundering etc. Does that now all go out of the window?

Putting that aside, does PokerStars want to allow all of Europe to play on this new "PokerStars Iberia" network? Pretty interesting business question there. Other regulated areas (UK, DE, BE, EE, BG...) wouldn't be allowed on. How do you balance the network to ensure good liquidity in both?

Honestly, I don't know. Probably the best would be boot everyone out and keep it ES/FR/IT only; lets be honest, they are pretty fishy countries and the games would be great, and the liquidity would be solid. That's pure speculation on my part though.

So certainly there would now be good reason for other operators to move into new jurisdictions and open things up. Winamax i'm sure would get a license in Italy and/or Spain (and, if possible, move all non-French over to the Spanish license...). Skins on iPoker might look to expand. Certainly Microgame/Peoples would benefit from expansion.

Thanks for the answers! Might have to move to Italy or Spain if it actually became limited to those 3 countries only.

Just to clarify: You said that .es is open to the whole world? Wat? I thought they only accept Spanish players?

An ES/FR/IT only site would be ideal because all the Spanish regs living in the UK would leave, and all the other Western European regs would get a break from having to deal with 4 Ukrainians on all our tables if we decide to play a little when we go on our holidays! =)

^^ and Portugal, please.

Thx. Did not know that.

Dont think so because :

Imo .fr is the only one that accepts eu players. And winamax oc.