Does anyone have official info what's it gonna be with Winamax?

I really doubt they would be excited to throw away their "ROW" player pool. Their Wseries has been growing steadily with 1M gtd. increments from 5-6M total Gtd. to 13M that it is now.

Their total volume will suffer quit a lot if they replace rest of Europe with Spain/PT only, unless they're going to launch Winamax International sometime soon?

+1

The simple answer is no, no one has any official info about what's gonna happen with Winamax. The operator is intensely private, rarely if ever speaks to journalists, rarely does press releases, rarely announces anything ahead of time.

I think the most official we have is posted in this thread a few months back - the Winamax twitter said they had no plans to withdraw from Germany (iirc - dont take my word for it, scroll back and check. i'm going on hazy memory). But how much stock you put in the Twitter social media guy is up to you.

You didn't asked for it, but in my opinion: i don't see anything in any of the regulations come out so far that would prohibit Winamax from continuing to offer online poker outside of the four signatory countries (i do not agree with the interpretation of the news articles posted a page or two back, that - in my opinion - misinterpreted French language published by ARJEL).

Spanish published their official rules in the BOE (state gazette) yesterday. Nothing in that changed the rules that prohibited non-Spanish customers signing up with Spanish accounts. If I were Winamax, I would be planning on moving all international customers to their Spanish license where tax will be significantly reduced.

Hood, i think this cant be correct. It took years and years to come to a player pool with France, PT, IT if all foreign countries are allowed to play from a Spanish license that would be complete ridiculous regarding the enourmous amounts of time they had to put into a seperate pool. Besides that, in Spain we have to apply for a NIE tax number/social number and show a recent utility bill with our name and Spanish adress to all Spanish pokerclients. Cellphone invoices etc are not allowed, they are very strict and obviously because of government demanding this. As i said, i would be very much surprised if suddenly they would allow ROW into this exclusive playerpool whos players will not have this tax/social security number and dont live in Spain, it would make no point anymore to be strict with these verification steps.
My 2 cents: Winamax will create two seperate servers/clients. Winamax for the ROW, and the new Winamax with the French/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian where they can always add other countries into in the future if those countries manage to get legal entry into this newly created playerpool.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it looks like the sites are independent on each country. For example Winamax.es, Winamax.pt and Winamax.it are their own sites, that have to follow regulations on those countries and have a possibility to connect and share network with these other countries. That would require a change in French laws for Winamax.fr to kick EU players out. Of course it's possible that there is a requirement for that in the new agreement.

""ARJEL said the operator must ensure that its brand only shares liquidity within the borders of the jurisdictions that participate in the project.""

This obviously looks bad, but this type of blocking is against EUs policies and this could mean that the games had to played within French/Spain/etc borders. So basically they couldn't discriminate people from other EU countries as long as the games are played inside this area. For example Italian sites are technically allowing people from other countries, but they require Italian tax number and address, which makes it effectively exclusive for Italians. If those type of changes doesn't happen in France, EU players should be ok.

Obv I'm being really optimistic here, but we'll see..

France and Spain shared player pool is live on PokerStars!

I can assure you, that is the case. I am quite familiar with the rules in Spain. The Spanish regs allow anyone - even outside of Europe - to have a Spanish account. 888 did this for a while when they opened their Spanish site.

edit: so did partypoker
http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-and-re...anish-players/


The law states that this is needed for Spanish citizens. For international players, some other form of equivalent ID is all that's required.

Much of this is operator-implemented KYC and/or internal decisions to keep the player pool Spanish only. PokerStars learned from their mistakes in France and kept Spanish player pool Spain only (tho they did let you play when outside the country, at least for a period. I have an NIE and played outside the country until i think 2014-2015 until they changed their policy.

This is absolutely an option open to them, but they've showed no interest in operating in ROW as yet. They have no Malta/IOM license, they withdrew from the UK when POC laws game in (rather than launch a seperate player pool).

The UK is by far Europe's largest regulated market; if they didn't fancy operating there, i'm not sure they want to operate a seperate player pool for their, i'm assuming quite minor, German and Skandi player base.

I would agree. Same with Spanish regs.

I do not agree with this intepretation that was published a month or two back from some media outlets.

With regard to discrimination, there are exceptions to the rule. States are free to discriminate on the grounds of "safety and security". Hence, they have blocked players ostensibly on the grounds of preventing money laundering etc. This sort of thing is trivial enough in comparison to other breaches of EU laws by different states - Spain for example owes billions in EU fines for environmental breaches (will prob be never paid).

so, its now live? French players and Spanish players already play together?

Yep, I saw same MTT in both and a FRESH series later in month.

how can i download the software without being redirected to stupid ps.eu??

anybody can share legit info on player tax in Spain? Is it for all or only pro? Paid directly when cashout or need to be declared? What form of taxation? Cost can be deducted? Do we have social security and retirement pension? Or at least contact for a good poker tax accountant in Spain

French and Spanish can now play together. Geat that they had a big announcement prior to the big moment lol not. They just changed it.

vpn

Im curious what the Spanish ask from foreigners, just passport?

Lol dont ask for social security and retirement questions when you live in Spain.
Cashouts on Stars are possible to Net and Mb/Skrill.
But thats only on Stars, cashouts on other sites are much more complicated and are only accepted to Spanish bank account.

+1

Portugal might join in 2020.

can we optimize our potential tax than if we are more or less MR nobody? or still we will need pay it off at some moment? what I am interesting is if winnings exceeded certain amount per year are reported directly to tax office by poker rooms or some external audit institution?

The reason why I ask is because I would with pleasure spend summer and play online poker in Spain but if it involve a ton of paper work later on in order to pay tax etc I would refrain on this option.

Congrats to those country, regulators and poker sites to doing the right thing. Hopefully soon all 4 to share one player pool. Is there any news about Monaco?

correct me if I am wrong, but couldn't residence of Monaco already creating account on Poker Stars FR? (I think is a case for other French poker rooms). if yes, they are probably automatically included in shared liquidity.

Hey, can you play on Winamax.FR from Spain now? and any other sites, like Microgaming, Ipoker etc? What other big sites I can play from Spain?

Not now, you can play .es sites like 888.es or sportium.es but are very small sites. Winamax is in in next months

Basically stars is alone here with all market, more now because is the first in put in the new market, and yesterday rake of cash up in stars spain for balance with france, and now is the same rake

Regarding ROW players I think the Spanish regulator also makes it pretty clear:

Which means that the client of the operator must ensure that the Spanish players will only share liquidity with players that are playing from countries that also subscribed the agreement. At this point this only involves Spain, Italy, France and Portugal. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense to have this agreement.

Now if they are going according to each country laws... well that's a different story. In Portugal for instance our law does not prohibit the international liquidity WORLDWIDE. This law was passed by the last right wing government. At that time the minister that was very responsive within the community clearly said that: "by not prohibiting the international liquidity the document allows it. We cannot state everything that it's forbidden. When we don't say anything about sharing liquidity we are allowing it. We understand that a small market like Portugal needs to share worldwide to be competitive" something along those lines.

But then all of a sudden the government change and the Portuguese regulator SRIJ completely shift focus to sharing liquidity with those countries even though that was not the intention of the legislator. The thing is: anyone that wants to operate in Portugal needs a license and they won't issue it if the operator allows sharing pools worldwide... now that's funny...

Yes yes... lot's of lobbies and local interests behind this.