Hearsay has it that cash games don't really make much profit for poker sites in France cause govt. tax is so rough. Govt. taxes pots preflop, but site takes the hit if pot doesn't reach the flop cause it's no flop, no drop for players. So totally understand Stars' logic on wanting to convert ROW players from .FR->.ES.

I wonder if .FR is still taxed 6,5%/3€ cap, when .ES is 5,75%/3€ cap or if they went with a unified rake. 3€*cap in HU pots too :O

Shared liquidity didn't change country level of tax. It is up to the room to decide if they charge customers differently according to their platform or charge a unified rake to all customers.
In the case of PS they have unified as follows (S. Rasset, Head of Poker):

• Ring games: We've taken a 5.75% midpoint between the pre-existing French and Spanish structures, moving from 6.5% for France and 5.25% for Spain and creating new caps for both.
• Zoom cash games: A structure much closer to Spain with 5.25% and revised caps. Full structure available on this page (PokerStars.fr , PokerStars.es) for cash game and ZOOM
• Spin & Go: Besides the 8% rake at 0.25€, all Spin & Go's will be raked at 7%, which represents a decrease for Spain, and is stable for France. Spin & Go pools will stay separate for a few days for technical reasons.
• Multi-table tournaments: Both countries will see an increase from about 9.5% to 10%.
• SNG: There will be an increase for Spain but fees will remain similar to before in France, especially for the hyper tournaments. A €3 buy-in SNG will have 5% rake for example, the lowest that we can reasonably offer due to the gaming duty.

after some reading and researching there are 3 things that seem clear to me at this point, but one still remains unclear.

it seems clear that:

- spanish regulation allows this to happen legally (accepting ROW players).
- pokerstars is doing this legally.
- this goes against the principle that was the foundation for the rome agreement.

it remains unclear if:

- can you or can`t you play on .es having already (and playing) on a .eu or .com account (because i saw mails and people feedback going both ways).

obv that this has huge implications, especially for the other 3 countries that signed the agreement, but also for us the players.

by now i was expecting to be fully informed about all of this but thats not the case.

lets see how all this will develop.

I would say that is clear by now that pokerstars.es and Spanish regulation allow ROW players to sign and play.

This is based on most info provided, and most of it coming from Hood.

As far as the implications go, for Amaya and Spain regulators means more revenue. For the players, I have already stated it in post made before ITT.

You saw the Russian flag or any other than Spain and France ?

They can, 100% sure.

The tourney lobby doesn't show country list/flags but if you open the tables and hover the mouse pointer at players screen name, it will show their country. I saw players from Russia, Austria, Hungary, Malta, Germany.

can you guys post a link with installator? thx

https://www.pokerstars.es/PokerStarsInstallES.exe

It's really not.

It's not a Pokerstars decision, it's the Spanish regulation's.

thats .EU installator.

This... fu PS. And all the MTTs have been postponed to 8pm - 9pm - 10 pm, this makes no sense at all.

could some pokerstars rep please come in or create a thread about this new "shared liquidity" market/client for the sake of the players questions?

the SNG-MTT offering is very weak; only 27man and 18man satellite turbos, really?

They were allowed to play. Now they will arrive in much bigger numbers as Stars rakeback plummeted and Spanish and Italians are the worst poker players in the world, even worse than Australians and Canadians.

Ok just to expand a bit on this, I believe there's a misunderstanding here about what segregated liquidity was really about.

In France and Spain, it is nothing to do with where the player is located, and everything to do with wanting all gambling activity falling within the purview of the local regulator. The regulators explictly drafted law that permitted international play on local licensed sites. They knew this when forging the shared liquidity agreement in July. They want PokerStars to open up the pool internationally!

Here's the key thing - the reason why they wanted "closed liquidity" is so that all activity fell under their licensing. They didn't want a French player playing with someone who was licensed in, say, Malta, or Isle of Man, or Curacao. This makes sense: They cannot verify how stringent the regs are in all other jurisdictions in the world. Do they have appropriate AML? Software testing? Player verification? We don't want our citizens playing online poker with someone licensed elsewhere, where they could be in some sketchy place that allows the player to use cheating software or do unchecked P2P transfers.*

But they want people internationally to play on their site That's just even more people falling under their watchful eye, more people falling under their idea of what regulation should be, and more obviously tax money.

So with the July 2017 agreement, they've said - [i]ok yep, these 4 regulations are mostly on the same page, we have the same kinds of regs, good AML checks and player verification, so as long as a player is licensed in one of us four, then that's all good.[i] Again, it has nothing to do with the location of the player. If someone from, say, Brazil or Germany plays on our license, then that's great - we know it is safe (because its either under our regs, or a fellow July 2017 regs), and the player pool grows.

That's why PokerStars opening internationally is not "against the principal" of shared liquidity regulations in any way.

[* There are less altruistic reasons for closed liquidity as well, i don't pretend that this was the only reason. It was, however, the public justification]

Netherlands is hopefully regulating in 2019. Some in the industry have even suggested to me that they think there's a chance NL will form part of the Southern European market, not dot-com.

As it stands now, operators have to be very careful if they continue operating in the market, they cannot advertise in NL, use the dutch language of dutch website, etc.

You're probably getting redirected on download.

Is there also a bit of disguising a U-turn here?

Like they are looking at how much money the UK are making in the international pool and they realise they made a mistake by leaving it, but they don't want to say "Lol we were dumb, but don't fire us as regulators." so they are trying to get the biggest player pool they can without doing a complete U-turn?

Without a doubt, the closed liquidity model was a screw up, and the regulators do readily admit that poker has declined due to the closed market. The Spanish regulator in the past has even said they want this as a step towards full liquidity (though practically now i think that can't happen, because that would be admitting this new Europe model was a failure).

Furthermore, the cynical reasons for closed liquidity (protecting local operators from entering into an existing market; so let's wall it off so e.g. PokerStars doesn't have a huge player base at entry; in Spain they weren't meant to use their old customer database for the new regulated site, for exmaple) has run its course (and a fat lot of good that did for the local operators anyway)

But - i do think there are legit reasons for closed liquidity, as I went into detail above. I can understand, for example, that a regulator would have difficulty accepting that its citizens could play against players who fall under a license elsewhere, where maybe the regulations are less stringent. So this 'open things up but only with in approved jurisdictions who have the same guiding principals as us' does make some consistent sense.

After this agreement I don't see how can any of those countries move to international liquidity in the future. What I can expect is the pool to get bigger welcoming in other regulated countries in the future.

All the news i have read in the last 2 years , spoke specifically of a closed market and players being phisically in that market , if that was false i dont know. I did not read the whole regulation documents for each Country.

There are some disturbing and quite stupid facts imo

1 - The premise , we want our player protected but at the same time we will allow
players from ""Uganda"" or wherever who might use bots and then it will be impossible to put a lawsuit cause guess what , we have no idea where they are + in some countries you can buy a new ID card for 5 euros , is complete rubish they are putting the onus of protecting the player on a site they cant control when the level of protection would be much higher if they have acess to the player fiscal number , adress+ id ie player based phisically in the country. This = Incompetence.

2 - The fact one of the Countries in this agreement will have thousands of players based in theyr stars.client and the others 0 , thus making money whyle the others look with idiot faces is so irritating i cant believe it can happen.Wouldnt it be more logic to have a client called , Stars.med for example and all the international pool tax money , lets say the 22% would then be split equally by the countries who make part of this pool ? Isnt this more logic and fair and also avoids problems that im almost sure will happen in some time , when govs will ask , wtf is going on , we are losing tons of money to spain.

Wouldnt this also be the right way to work in case of a pool . EU ?

- This will not work for long.

Why ?

Its simple , everyone will ask and warn theyr respectiv govs , they will see they lose
money to a Country and they will enforce a common client .med with sub clients .fr.pt etc do the money is properly split

I might be wrong , but i give 3-6 months to this new pool to survive , once Portugal enters who clearly has the biggest reg proportions , theres not enough recreational players to keep this alive , specially if all the international players who join are regs.

Stars have done it again.They should be the ones proposing the most effectiv+fair method because we all know lawmakers decide a lot on this they dont understand (+ they are utterly incompetent obv) but they show to be greedy and in some months this will have serious consequences.

In a worst case scenario , some Countries might even reconsider removing themselfs from the Pool , or put all this in hold , what do u think a politician will look like when a newspaper says

Hey dude , so u make this law...your own Country is losing 20 million per year to spain
and it was so simple to fix that.... shouldnt u resign dude ?

poker regulation is killing poker in france, opening the market will change nothing, Fixed Tax is moronic.

can anyone give PokerStarsInstallES.exe file pls . And not a link to spanish pokerstars but real file

thats why i asked for file here support is not answering.

So right now, UK players cannot play as we are regulated under .uk, but the UK has a chance to join the 4 countries in this new agreement in the future? is that correct?