Ontario was suppose to get single game sports betting 3-4 years ago and it never happened. I actually do see online gambling happening though it will be horrible in the same way everything the OLG does is.

well the bclc attempt was utterly disastrous (as the article mentioned) and it's probably years away from actually implementing poker, so I think it will be awhile before any of this gets running.

Will we still be able to use offshore sites when this thing gets up and running?

I hope so, unless they set up something like Frank's bill in the US re: licensing that would allow us to play on pokerstars.ca or whatever with a global player pool. Otherwise it would be a weird turn of events of Americans thinking about moving to Canada to play to vise versa.

I can't see what the province could do and feds have no interest in online gambling.

There is room for a nice federal-provincial bargain here:

Provinces provide gambling-related revenue sharing to federal government (probably through sharing the profits associated with province running online gambling).

In exchange Feds exercise trade/commerce and criminal law powers to curtail non-provincially sanctioned online gambling.

I've written about this potential bargain in the past: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1025588

if im stuck not being able to play on PS and FTP then ontario and the other provinces better come up with 2 seperate sites with at least 100k+ ppl on them, that looks siick and has major MTTs, with big garuntees, and something equiv. to WCOOP and FTOPS or ima be pissed

I don't think the Ontario site is a major threat of shutting down access to other sites.

I also don't believe that the Ontario site will be competitive at poker. I think they might do ok as a online casino even though the odds will be worse than any other site but that is it.

Getting around a Canadian ban on playing on PS or FTP would be a joke. It isn't like the Canadian public service is competent.

Evidently Boss is already banning Canadian players citing new regulations but its not time to panic yet because it looks like they won the contract to create a Canadian network.

does this ontario legislation change anything in the way we look at the overall canadian tax situation or does that stay the same it was yesterday?

They are just going for a cut of the online action, not trying to muscle out other people.
You might be able to fund and withdraw from your online accounts at your local B&M OLG casino though and that would be great.

The announcement changes nothing about the income tax situation of course.

This site might be super competitive. It will be first online room were public get real proof of RNG's honesty! Just request data through Privacy Commissioner... Nothing change our tax status.

Anyone with a basic understanding of stats already has proof of RNG fairness. Rig-tards are not a big enough demographic to make up for the loss of players who do not want to pay the 3-4X rake that a government run site will take.

lol well said, Henry.

Looks like mantra. Nothing new. Do you have any proof that government will charge bigger rake than private rooms? Do u have any proof than no private room that run home bots-superusers? Do u understand more than basic stats? Right? Can u catch them trough stats too? Does exist any real control after rooms? Kahnawake Gaming Commission? Have u been there? Did u see mattress factory? LOL.
I like thinking. Not repeating mantras. Doesn't work for me.

Proof is such a strong level of certainty. I would say that there is a very high probability. So high that if action was offered on it you'd be hard pressed to make the line in a way as to get any decent amount of betting on the no side.

If I believed this was happening I could test for it. I don't believe it is happening on the major sites so I don't.

Yes and yes. It is actually very easy to test for this if you have enough data which any serious player would have and which given sites like TR any interested party could purchase.

Who cares? Kahnawake isn't relevant.

U can't catch any home bot if it exist. It doesn't affect stats of players in any way. And especially if it exist just several days and afterward disappeared. Do you want samples of such actions or u really understand what are u talking about not just declare?
Today doesn't exist any really independent control of online private sector. But myself prefer control not trust. I don't trust. I want full control not "very high probability". In government room control will be in my hands. But u just trust, believe and assume. Really different way of thinking.

You said a super-user bot run by the site. A home bot I trust Stars to catch. Why do you think the government -- given how incompetent they are at everything else -- would be able to stop home-bots better than a site like Stars?

Also for most bots the AI is not very advanced and it is not a threat.

I'll put $1000 on the No side.

U don't understand what I'm talking about. Google first. Afterward answer.
POKER SUPERUSER.

I don't understand what you are talking about because your english is horrible.

If the question is about super users then yes it is possible to catch them with statistical analysis.

The players analyzing their own data and communicating on these forums has been the force behind uncovering all the major scandals I've heard of. Like for example the infamous Cereus superusers ect. The latest Stars bot ring was uncovered by a player reviewing data on PokerTableRatings. Some people are pretty critical of PTR and it's scandalous they sell hand histories in million hand + batches and now charge memberships, but they are an independent and objective source of tracking and monitoring of the major online poker rooms.

I doubt we'd have PTR tracking available online for a BC government run site. Personally I feel much safer with 3rd party monitoring + public access to data and a massive pool of vigilant professional players than government monitoring that we'd have no part in.

Does PTR track Svenska Spel?

You don't think a provincially run poker site will also be vulnerable to insiders? They are contracting BOSS media software and there will be programmers employed who will have access to the encryption and sensitive information. It's ALWAYS possible with the massive sums of money involved and greed for someone on the inside to try something (just like with Cereus). But with the BC run site we won't have public access to all hands played refreshed hourly on PTR and a whole international community of 2+2 closely monitoring.