Since the 1st of October a law has been introduced in the Netherlands that legalizes poker for the foreseeable future. Good stuff obviously, but short term it means that all the big poker networks (except for GGNetwork) have been penalized for offering gambling services to Dutch players in the past and have not been able to file a license request yet to keep offering the same services. They're working on that stuff now or closer to the end of the year and will probably be back mid '22 somewhere. For now, I believe this means players situated in the Netherlands basically have three viable options: GGPoker (GGNetwork), Bet365 (iPoker) or Holland Casino Online (iPoker).

I've been playing on the iPoker skins recently and the playing experience has been truly miserable.

1. In accordance with the new gambling law, players need to be constantly reminded what limits they've set for themselves and what constitutes responsible gambling. This means that if you're multi-tabling quick games, like their spins format (Twister Sit & Go's), and play, let's say, 150 games a night, you have to close 150 pop-up windows yapping on and on about responsible gambling during your session.

2. The first point wouldn't be more than an annoying inconvenience if it didn't coincide with the following: I've been logged out of my account out of nowhere twice now in the past three days. You receive a pop-up window saying you were forced to log-out of the client, and that's your games gone. Why gone? Because if you've let the pop-up windows about responsible gambling stack up behind your tables, you're now forced to close every single pop-up window until you arrive at the pop-up window saying you were forced to log-out, then you close that and then you can finally log-in again. Needless to say, you've been blinded out at all your tables if you play spins/hyper structures once you've finally managed to do this. Obviously you autolose in a winner takes all format when you're forced to log-out, because you're always gonna blind out against the last player left.

3. You can hardly take time off the tables to bother with those pop-up windows anyway, because the Twister Sit & Go's have no timebank. If you happen to be a multi-tabling reg, you have to make every single decision on every table on every street during your entire session within 15 seconds. When you run out of time, you sit out and autofold your hand when villain bets. I've already seen players hunt for moments like this by snap minbetting river to steal pots.

4. My buy-in for only one Twister Sit & Go has been reimbursed as a 'gesture of goodwill' by Bet365 staff, despite having been blinded out in multiple of these games already after being randomly logged-out of the client. After this act of generosity, they essentially tell you you can stick it and take the financial damage yourself, even though it's the provider's responsibility to have a well functioning client/server. I've hit up support about this issue and the only suggestion they had was to delete cookies/history on my device to hopefully not have this happen again, which I already did prior to installing the client three days ago.

5. Another way you can be forced to log-out is when you surpass the playing limit you've set for yourself. The max limit is twelve hours. Nothing in the client shows how much time you've got left to play, so you basically have to keep track of this yourself. This will be a waste of time, because unbelievably enough this somehow isn't tracked accurately by the poker provider. I've been forcefully logged out twice now in the past three days - this is on top of the moments where I forcefully logged out without a reason being given - after playing a total of 9-10 hours a day, because my 12 hour limit had allegedly been surpassed. I was dumbfounded when I saw this and requested the specific times that I had my client open. The staff member mentioned the client was still registered as being open around like 05:00 and 06:00 in the morning. I was asleep around those hours and had shut down the device I was playing on a couple hours before this. Today I took extra care in not exceeding the playing limit and was forcefully logged out again around an hour ago, after having played roughly between 0:00 - 02:00; 14:00 - 18:00 and 19:00 - 22:00 at most, equating to a total of 9 hours. The system simply doesn't work accurately, which I just can't wrap my head around how they've managed to achieve this. Again, I won't see any of the buy-ins I've shelled out for the Sit & Go's back.

This is obviously just a playing example of someone who grinds the spins format, but can you only imagine what this must be like if someone wants to grind MTT's on these skins as a Dutch resident? You'll have to put big time margins into place to decide whether you can still register for an MTT, because if the MTT happens to drag out more than it's estimated finishing time, or your playing time isn't registered correctly, you just (prematurely) get kicked out of the client and blind down during the final table.

Would like to hear your thoughts on the matter. If any other Dutch players have dealt with the same, by all means share ITT.

Edit: didn't mean for this to end up in News, Views and Gossip, sorry. If it needs to be moved to 'Poker Software' or something, obviously all good.

I am another Dutch player in a comparable situation (though I play WAY lower volume, more of serious recreational player).
I have moved (from PokerStars) to GG Poker.

They also have these reminders but in a way less obstructive way. There's one at login, and then one every hour to update you on your current wins/losses (which is way wrong because they count any money on tables/in play as lost).

So they handle this a lot better.

It looks like sites need to do something like to comply to Dutch rules.
If iPoker doesn't really respond to your complaints how their actions are hurting you, I personally would just leave. (Plus point for GG: I reported a smallish bug in their software and it was fixed in a matter of days. As an IT professional, I know that is quite an accomplishment.)

I suggest you complain to your regulator about the stupid rules they are enforcing.

Cheers for shooting a message to describe what playing has been like for you since the introduction of the new gambling law. It's been a huge change within the Dutch poker community, but as we have basically zero pokerfora with reasonable traffic it's been difficult to find a place to even briefly discuss it.

The responsible gambling pop-ups seem to be handled a lot better by GG based on what you're saying. I can confirm that our government has obligated poker providers to confront players with them on a consistent basis. Even though I seriously doubt they have a significant effect on battling gambling addiction, I don't have a problem with them. It's really been the combination of the mass pop-ups with whatever caused me to automatically log-out of the client on the iPoker skins multiple sessions in a row that made the whole thing infuriating, as I basically couldn't log back in again until I got rid of whatever amount of pop-ups had stacked up during my session, which obviously cost me dearly.

I think you made the best decision by registering on GG. They're the only site out of the available three that for some reason are allowed to offer players an inhouse VIP program or promotions to reward players some rakeback. Our brilliant government has decided to label such programs as a way for poker providers to entice players to put in more volume and therefor has prohibited the two iPoker providers of offering any VIP program or promotions because they 'contribute to gambling addiction'. They're obviously not wrong that they entice players to put in more volume, but especially these inhouse VIP programs are often the primary reason a few of us can actually make a living off of playing poker as well. I think this perspective will only scare away winning regs from the few legal places that they can play at, who shouldn't be a concern to our government anyway, and will only increase the losses of losing recs that don't pay attention to things like rakeback.
I don't know why GG is still allowed to provide us with either an inhouse VIP program, promotions or both to crank out some rakeback. If I were you I'd keep close attention whether this will remain or not.

I meanwhile have in fact left Bet365 and Holland Casino Online, because of the issues I described having with them and because of the total absence of a VIP program to crank out some rakeback. I unfortunately don't have a viable legal place to play now, since I've studied sng's and spins over the past years and GG offers a **** spins format and doesn't offer sng's. I'll find my way around the block though.

I could give this a go, but I highly doubt they're gonna take complaints seriously just after enforcing the new gambling law. Maybe for something down the line though, I'll keep your suggestion in mind.
Cheers, have a good one.

This situation is just rediculous. No sound of mind player will play on ipoker network. Are those Holland Casino people braindead or what ? How can the "goverment" even allow this network to be used ?

Only option left for us is GGPoker but they are to bussy handling all the new account applications.

I read that GGpoker does not allow a HUD a la HEM or PT, is that correct?
Anyone know of any rakeback deals for any of the legalized dutch sites?(GGPoker, Holland Casino, Bet365,....)?

I don't know if you've dealt with their customer support, but it's an even bigger joke than the already poor industry standard. They told me a couple months ago that they had launched five or six weeks before that and that they were essentially still completely incompetent to answer even basic questions. Stuff like whether or not a poker format had a timebank (it never activated and nowhere was mentioned what formats provided one) and what bonus programs they were offering was met with an apology that they just didn't know. I had to call back on a specific date and time - yep call, no live support - multiple weeks in a row because there would be an employee available that had a minor background in poker that could answer some basic ****. There's no way I'm gonna hand over tens of thousands of dollars in rake a year to a site like that.

How ****ing stupid are they as well? They have this small window to draw Dutch players in now that the market leaders are temporarily out of the game and provide them with an enjoyable experience and good customer service, so there's a small chance they can hold on to them when the big guns get back into the market. They need to do an amazing job to accomplish that and they're doing such a poor job that I already left before I had somewhere else to play. Madness.

(I haven't checked back on this thread for a few months ..., but maybe this still has worth.)

GG has its own really minor HUD, showing just VPIP/PFR/Steal%/3bet%.
Both two latter ones look ridiculous on most players -- they will have something like 20% 3bet, but when you go to war pre, they always show up with AK,QQ+.

Still, it helps a bit. You can load anonymized hand histories into PT4 to study your own stats -- I think this is actually quite a good idea by them.


Rakeback is standardized at 20% ("Platinum Fish"), though you can go higher if you play large volume.

Weirdly, I have had most of my rakeback through their ThanksGG program, where losing a big hand through a cooler or bad beat enters you into a lottery (an all-in every hand tournament), and I have won something like 30 buy-ins in them, in 3 months. It's gotten to a point where I do more calls of shoves because I know I will get into the lottery if I lose -- I haven't done the actual EV calculation, but it looks like you have a 10% chance to get 6 buy-ins back.

Almost a year now .................

Yeah, we're still in dire straits if you ask me. Unibet is back on the market now, so we do have an additional option. From what I've read, they don't offer any rakeback though, which makes the formats I specialize in pointless to play. I sent them an e-mail to figure out whether they have rakeback programs in store for us in the future, but I highly doubt they will, as they have to comply with the ******ed restrictions our government has imposed on them.
Funny that in an attempt to protect players they've made the probability of becoming a winning player even smaller and likely made losing players lose more by not allowing the poker platform to provide rakeback programs. All they have to do is offer flat rakeback so players don't have an extra incentive to play while they simultaniously won't get absolutely farmed by the rake. I guess that demands too much big brain energy from our government.