It's official. The agreement for the new France-Italy-Spain-Portugal shared market will be signed next week.


Link for the source: Portuguese Regulator

Great news. How long will it take for it to actually happen?

Pretty good. I know that in portugal there's almost nothing that runs above 50z, so gonna be really good over there at the least. I imagine it's probably a similar state for the rest of those countries.

ROW players allowed?

Better than nothing. Vamooos.

Enviado do meu MotoE2(4G-LTE) através de Tapatalk

It will probably only be effective on 2018. We should expect a couple of months to deal with bureaucracies as always.

Yes, the Portuguese market started in great shape because people hadn't played for more then a year but obviously after the initial boom ceased and the recreational started to re-deposit at a slower rate the player pool got really small as expected.

Only at night time the 25NL zoom pool starts running with 30-50 entries at best. Higher then that there's no zoom and only a couple of regular tables filled with regs obviously.

Other countries are probably not that bad but still I think everyone should benefit from a larger pool. The bigger MTT's fields should attract more people to the game and ultimately to the cash tables as well I expect.

Excellent news, spanish players use to be so soft & always heard good things about italians.

bang bang?

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

finaly some good news...alex dreyfus post that too on fb so i think that our chances are pretty good

But how much do you get taxed, 95%? And how does forming a 4 country pool benefit anymore than sharing worldwide pool?

Since the rules have to be set in stone by now... ROW or European players have access to this site?

No. It will be strictly ringfenced to those four countries, but UK gambling bodies attend these meetings so there are some inditions that UK may join, however, it won't be at the launch.

How about if you become a resident of any of those countries? You probably should get an access or do you have to be citizen/have passport as well? (I'm guessing the latter option must be against some EU constitution and movement of capital & labour?)

Good for them. ... Games got to be great with all the Italians :/

very much doubt 5 countries will be more lucrative than however many are worldwide!! Being from UK I personally wouldn't relish joining em

Sure, it sucks if you are forced into a segregated market. Having access from outside is another story tho...

They will have a ton of players, other than at the highest games. Above nlh50 or 100; the games are easier at .com.

The rake will likely be higher there, as it is their deal. If this spreads EU wide, it means the rake and juice gets higher here (our countries want their cut and the site puts us to pay at least half of it because it is a business, although they already do that for many of us without paying a penny to our country).

But it is okay, as the cash games are dying and the sites need to juice more. And the country needs more money to give to the esports teams.

The UK could join the USA pool, or form another pool with the Russians and some other banana nations inside Europe.

can't see the UK joining a segregated mini-eu player pool . It goes completely against what the people voted for in Brexit, we're getting out and trading with the rest of the world rather than being europe facing.

Mini pool? This would create the second biggest pool after Pokerstars.

Obviously a 4 country pool is not better than the shared worldwide pool but it's WAY better than what those 4 countries have now which is ring fenced tiny markets. In that sense it's a step up.

About taxes we'll have to wait and see how it unfolds. At this point each county has a different model. To this date the players are not taxed in Portugal because the legislator didn't bother with the small percentage that are winners. Poker is considered "gambling" so they assume in the long run nobody gets a regular income out of gambling.

This might change now though. Don't know if they intend to make it uniform across all counties but I don't see it a necessity for the shared pool to work. Each player should fulfill their duties according to the local legislation. The shared market is more focused on the protection of the players and game integrity. But still, we'll have to wait.

This is the first positive news for the Poker ecosystem in a long time. Unfortunately it will only almost affect to Pokerstars because almost all the other Poker Networks in those countries already disappear.

Lets see what is going to happen with this

For those who are able to speak Spanish http://www.poker-red.com/noticias/ul...lio-roma-27045

Here's a behind the paywall link to an article I wrote on Friday.

thanks.
do you think it will be full shared liquidity (including cashgames) or mtt's only ?

The French cash game tax- pot taxed even if there is no flop - is completely incompatible.