Are you sure? I wonder what has been in effect the last few years, you know that thing called "Glücksspielstaatsvertrag" ... it's just an amendment to the already existing ABC, yet they can barely enforce anything.

And as far as the already approved sports betting licenses ... if they revert them, they will get f'd. And we idiots / citizens pay for their stupidity. Ah well, some things never change.

Jupp expired to my knowledge. New law is expected to take effect July 1 but not yet ratified to my knowledge.

I'd be happy to learn different

Yep in SWH, but no poker so they can easy incorporate thes into the existing law with out problems.

No poker site has any German license. So no problem f----in all the sites once poker becomes illegal.

In Germany its the opposite compared to US.

Sports betting is cool but poker is the devil. Never heard of the betting scandals in Germany?

I used to live in Saarbruecken, a really poor area in Germany right next to France and Rammstein and there is a sportsbetting shop at every other street corner. They also have 3 casinos that offer poker in the area (within like 30 min drive).

Obv. the lobby wants everything to stay the way it is so the fish lose their money the existing ways.

There are sports betting shops all over and slot casinos at every autobahn rest stop and in every town. Bars also have slots and even gas stations have slots in Germany.

because they hit whatever miracle they need to win a hand.
really lucky^^^

Right now it is exactly the same like it will be in July. We have a Staatsvertrag which prohibits online poker. The problem is that Pokerstars and any other poker site claims that this has no effect because their servers are not in Germany.

What is Stars doing to find new users?
Would be nice if they put more ads in the TV (Although I don't know how much they do that in various countries - in any case, add more). Majority of people still seem to see poker as gambling, the ads should contain short interviews with long term winning players. Maybe show something about the bankroll building challenges and possibly do more of them.

The prospect of making money online and quitting the day job should be attractive enough and just because stars is on the top right now, doesn't mean that they should relax and slow down. I want them to be around and thriving a decade from now.

^^ canadian living in germany (from SN)? me too

edit to habs fan

that would be the most stupidest thing ever.

its good that's its seen as gambling and having some fun hours in front of the computer. advertising to all people to start at micro stakes, learn poker, ... is the complete opposite of whats good for regs.

who care about regs! but can we stay on topic?

not much to say on the topic that hasn't already been said

Not everyone who tries poker learns to make money from it, not even at micro stakes, which slogan would you use to reel the fish in "give us your money you donkeys?"

How long do you expect the losing players to continue playing before quitting? People will always keep leaving the site and new people need to be brought in. It doesn't matter what you tell them as long as you get them to sign up. Most of them will be losing players either way.

I find it important for the game and the players to have a good image in the public's eyes instead of them being seen as random degenerates.

There are people who think that playing lottery is a good idea, you show them that there are players who earn a decent monthly salary with poker and some of those lottery players will join up and they will lose, they won't bother to learn the strategy because it seems too complicated to them (even if it isn't).

I'm not saying that you should teach them to win, I am saying that you should get them to invest their money on the site, which a lot of people might not do because they think that playing poker is like playing slots.

oh well.. if governments keep having this stupid attitude against online poker they will kill it rather sooner than later, it's funny though how they don't give a damn about slots, dices, roulette and all that bs that is just a stealing money from people but they wanna kill poker lol.

A agree with that. If everyone knows that poker is a skill game you can proudly tell your grandma that you are a poker player. Much better than telling folks you are a gambler.

The image of poker will be one of the most important thing to drive anything, especially new players all the way to getting **** done politically.

Lot of tax revenue.
What happens to the citizens who got a gambling problem and ruin itselfs, the govt does not care.

You all should realize Stars currently allows play from numerous countries where online poker is expressly illegal. They ban players from .com once they get express permission to setup shop, naturally with heftily increased rake and decreased rewards, inside the borders of a given country. If you email Stars and ask which countries are banned, their default response is some line about them being a law abiding operator and that it's up to the player to figure out if it's legal for them to play or not. Germany 'regulating' poker would be much worse news than this. Unless Germany pulls a DoJ I doubt much will change, though it will be interesting to see what happens.

Well if the different countries considered poker as a sport this might be true. Unfortunately I think they are more likely to consider it as gambling and a necessary evil. So their idea might be rather to restrict it as much as possible while still allowing people to play legally to avoid shady businesses to take the money.

In Finland we have monopoly on gaming and only the national companies are allowed to advertise and offer gaming services, and they do make quite a lot of money. From what I heard sports bettors get fairly crappy odds from the national company, but that doesn't prevent the company from being successful. Their online poker room however isn't doing well, which I think is a good thing otherwise they might have more leverage in trying to prevent us from playing abroad. So happy though that we aren't prevented playing on foreign sites online...

the problem is other countries are hurting for money just like the usa. Basically what they are doing is trying to bankrupt poker stars. I am sure everyone pulls out and then what will happen is they make there own poker sites for there own countries and make there own money. Just like i believe the US is going to do. Then they can start taxing the players for the winnings. That creates more money for each country. But that is what it looks they are doing. Poker stars is going to end up bankrupt just like absolute and full tilt poker. Its all a set up by the government so they can start a brand new site for us to play on and monopolize in online gambling.

Tweaked the title.

yes because france, belgium, italy, spain and other smaller countries are sure bankrupting stars. Sure the countries want to get a cut of the money but they do not want to specifically bankrupt pokerstars..

Germans don't need 2+2, they have their own huge community.

Interested in a small sidebet? I'll even lay you 1,5:1, e.g. your 100€ against my 150€, that people in Germany can still play on Stars on 7/2?
Yes, because russians don't use pokerstrategy. lol

Is Russia 1st/2nd largest market at 2+2?

Definitely not. They do use pokerstrategy) and have couple big forums also. Poker is illegal in Russia since 2009, but goverment still (gladly) dont care about online.