http://latin.pokernews.com/noticias/...exico-3367.htm

Say it aint so

This should have U.S. pros playing in Mexico shaking in their boots or at least considering where to move next.

As a Mexican, I can say with all the shame in the world that we have the most greedy, corrupt and ignorant people making/passing laws. If they want taxes, they will get them, period.

The law, if passed, explicitly says that it will require sites to have pokersite.com.mx

Simply judging by the amount of actual mexican players I see in the tourney/sng lobbies, I don't think we have a big enough player pool to sustain a healthy poker economy. 80% of the polulation is basically poor. Excess "gambling" money isn't exactly a surplus.

This won't affect me personally, as I'm a rec player playing micro sngs/tourneys for fun, but the mexican pros and U.S. players playing on mexican soil, should be monitoring this closely.

Google translate on text and image (OCRed using www.newocr.com):

Juk

Politicians are parasites no matter what country they are in.

They never think "how can we give players freedom of choice?". It is always "how can we control this?" and "how can we generate revenue from this?".

Made this exact thread a few weeks ago, couple of gringos were just like 'lol mexico' and no one had anything to contribute.

This is going to suck.

Yup. ^

One of the reasons I left Canada was because of skrill (and NT) stopped offering services. Now Mexico prob gonna be a bust. Personally I don't want to live more than a few hr flight from my US home. Such a shame, really growing to love playa del carmen.

The amount if bad news vs good news in poker world is just astounding. It's like I wake up and wonder what bad news will be announced today. Between govts regulation, scammers, sites scamming, banks/moving money difficulties, AND actually beating some very difficult poker games, poker world has become pretty ****ing tough.

It sucks because I still love poker and have drive for it but I can't help but feel retirement looming in the next 1-2yrs.

Does it say when this will go into effect?

Yea, it's going to suck for the pro grinders mostly.

If regulation wasn't an issue, I never saw poker exploding in Mexico like it did in Brazil for example. I don't think the disappearance of mexican "fish money" is going to affect worldwide bankrolls anyway.

U.S./Mexican pros will have to go to Guatemala now.. lol

Great move by mexico, basically forcing all the rich americans to move out if this goes through. Not sure who they expect to stay to support their withered mexico-only site.

Mexican congress is a mess right now, this could take a while to be set in effect.

It could be approved very very soon, but that doesn't mean it will be applied right away.

pokerstars.com, pokerstars.co.uk and pokerstars.eu have the same player pool. I don't speak Spanish but I don't see anything ITT that says it is something different to the UK model.

^
"Operators such as PokerStars , Full Tilt Poker , 888 Poker , PartyPoker and others will be directly affected because they must have a .com domain, so you have to bring your servers to Mexico."

This passage is translated and I am not sure if author of the article was inferring that servers needed to be brought to Mexico or that is what the new regulation stipulates. Because he mentions having to have a proper .com domain with mexico's TLD (.com.mx or .mx) as the reason for having to bring the servers, its possible he just talking about domain servers and not actual gaming servers

If so, a UK type model wouldnt be so far fetched, but then again I am only speculating and probably missed some other damning information in the article

Not all is said, missing the vote of the Senate, if the new law remain approved, it would take 60 days to be made effective. We will be very attentive to the results, starting next Tuesday we'll be on the lookout for defining the position that will poker in our country and as may be applied.

Do you know of a good mexican news website, twitter account, or anything like that to stay up to date?

Unofficial translation of Internet gaming stuff:

Finally, The Special Commission for Gambling and Games presented yesterday to the Mexican Secretariat of the Interior the Gambling and Gaming bill proposal. This will be presented next week to the House of Representatives and if its approved it will substitute the current Gambling and Gaming law form 1947.

What does the new bill say?

To see the complete new Bill of Gambling and Gaming click here.

How will this affect online poker?

This is what Article 71 says :

Article 71. The licensee to exploit online gaming should establish their website under the “com.mx” domain, and should establish the necessary mechanisms or systems to guarantee that all of the activities of online gaming are taken care of from said website.

The licensee must install in national territory a computer system that backs up entirely and in real time the information that is required by the regulation, which would be provided to the Institute whenever they request it.

Operators like Poker stars, Full Tilt Poker, 888Poker, PartyPoker among others will be affected because they will have to have a “.com.mx” domain, so they will have to bring their servers to Mexico . In general, if the operators do not find that change attractive. Online poker will be affected.

What about live gaming?

Article 4 says: “Given that the bill project does not indicate which games are allowed , all games could be developed, as long as they have the permission of the Institute , they don't transgress any other public order dispositions and are executed with clear and transparent rules to the participants.”

While this news is alarming, there are some other things to consider.

First: It does seem this is purely for regulation, similar to what the UK just did.

Second: The Mexican government is going through some **** right now and the current ruling party has much bigger concerns at the moment. I would not be surprised if this gets delayed for a long time or completely dropped until they get other massive issues sorted.

codigopoker.com is really the only Mexican poker news outlet around. I know/know of a few players here that are well connected when it comes to knowing the specifics of these things, I'll be updating this thread as more relevant things are said.

I'm a bit surprised so few people seem to care about this. Good to see I'm not the only concerned about how poorly this may end up playing out.

yeah this blows

when are you coming out to chiltepin to eat with me and basj?

http://mx.codigopoker.com/

ugh, scary

Won't Pokerstars and other sites just ignore this? What is Mexico gonna do?

cartel bosses/affiliates will likely round up poker site senior executives and burn them in a mass grave

I have played pokerstars for 5 years now, as a semi pro. Never see a single mexican online player. Don't see much a big impact at online poker world.

wat?

The impact isn't the Mexican players potentially leaving the player pool, it's all of the online grinders who live in Mexico.