I think ultimately one question is if German players registered on .fr are "playing from countries subscribed to the agreement." Does that mean they are "playing" from France or from Germany? They are playing from a site that is part of the agreement, and .fr sites aren't sharing liquidity with non .fr sites, i.e. winamax.fr isn't sharing liquidity with a .eu or some other site that isn't part of the agreement.

That sounds to me what this term might be thinking about - they don't want winamax.fr having some shared liquidity agreement with bodog.eu and then another shared liquidity agreement with winamax.es and winamax.it...and then there is a backdoor to connecting one site with every other. By allowing an EU citizen in Berlin to play on winamax.fr, they aren't really sharing liquidity with anyone...they are all playing on a .fr site.

Is "sharing liquidity" defined as a partnership between one site and another or does "sharing" mean players within a site? Seems like that's the question and I don't really see how this makes it clear - and I would think that the partnership agreement wouldn't supersede the core regulations that winamax has agreed to with the French government.

If they are in Germany then they are playing from Germany which does not qualify here. If the operator in this case winamax wants to operate on this pool they have to block access to ROW players on this pool, otherwise they can continue as they are now. It's an individual choice that each company has to made.

I think that the best way to look at it is to see what pokerstars.fr did in order to approach this shared pool: they completely stop providing games to row players on their french site some months ago as a preparation for this step. They wouldn't have done this if it wasn't a condition to operate.

The weird thing is you can register an account from basically every county in the world on Stars.ES. I never knew this but it was mentioned earlier in this thread and i checked it out and apparantly you can. If you get validated or will ever be able to cash out i have no idea, but to sign up on stars.es is possible with a foreign ID. I never knew this because i live in Spain and have a NIE number.

i think there will be ROW and PEFI and both pools will not merge.

Only real question to me is if Winamax wants two different servers for two different pools.

I think they might.

That's not my interpretation at all. I read this as - a near word-for-word translation - "The technical system ensures that players with a Spanish user account can only share liquidity with players with accounts registered in EEA countries whose authorities have signed the July agreement [currently France, Italy and Portugal]"

It says nothing about where the player resides - it just discusses where the user account is registered. The Spanish regulations permit players internationally to register for accounts. French regulations permit any players with an EU bank account to register for an account. These rules haven't changed.

They did this because they didn't want Germans, Russias etc playing on the French-Spanish pool, where they would create an ecology imbalance. They want to start afresh with a new, balanced, player pool, while keeping the ROW on the global dot-com pool.

Correct me if am wrong, but you still need to have NIE number in order to do so no? Basically it means you can be other countries resident but you have be at least registered non-resident in Spain with tax identification number which help to enforce tax in case of winning. Imo it is fair and enough. It would be stupid to offer such entertainment as poker game only for permanent resident. Especially in Spain where people come only for few months in summer etc. And as well I think once outside of Spain you cannot play on ps.EU (but if somebody could confirm it would be great..).

Twist!

PokerStars has decided that the new player pool is open to non-French and Spanish players - dot-ES account registration now open to foreigners (but presumably can't be played from UK, Denmark etc). They closed out the French player pool a year ago in preparation of moving these players over to Spain where the tax is lower. So, what I said Winamax should be preparing to do :-)

What do you mean??

If you are not a resident of Spain, and you dont live in Spain, but you open a .ES account you can play with them ??

Yup

Then why is there still even a ROW/.EU Stars server? Then this new .FR/.ES collab will just be the new .COM Stars. Idk if thats actually a good thing because of the past developments with the Stars.EU and previous .COM...

1) Because there's around a dozen regulated markets that cannot join this pool - UK, Denmark, Czech, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece etc. These will always form a core part of the "international" player pool. Other countries will probably follow (Sweden, Netherlands, even say Colombia, Brazil). Unless these countries sign the July accord - which may not be feasible - they cannot join the Southern European pool.

2) Because the gaming tax in Malta and Isle of Man is <1%, and in Spain it is ~22%

Hmm tbh i think to open it up for ROW countries especially the eastern european countries where they seem to invented the word NIT is not good at all.
We all know how the flooding of Eastern European players with a lot less average daily money to spend for a gamble online thus filtering out most of the recreative and attracting young NITS whom already can make a decent living by grinding out a 1000 a month salary.
Lets see how this turns out, imo stupid to throw it all open so quickly without any idea what it will do with the games.
We have seen how the .COM developed into a much tougher to beat grind.

This is one interesting development

im from eastern europe and i play 32 25 , man fu

"Hello George,
Thank you for contacting us.

As a player on the .RO platform, you are not eligible to play on the .ES license.

The .ES license is only available to players that are residents of Spain or residents of a country currently served by our .COM and .EU licenses.

Regards, "


Damn it, not fair. so as a romanian i am not allowed, but other players form .com and .eu liccenses seem to be able to play.

Does anybody know wich countryes are in this category ?

I think that answers any lingering questions about Winamax. I'm even more confident now that:

a) they won't be booting off anyone internationally

b) they will also allow international signups on Winamax.ES, once that is live, and they will either shut new signups on dot-FR with time, look to migrate existing accounts over, or at least try to incentivize signups on ES over FR.

So people excluded are those on local licenses. Unfortunately Romania is one, so is UK - i listed the major ones a few posts up. Everyone else is open now to sign up on ES, though in theory i guess PS could funnel any country that want to dot-com instead of dot-ES.

Right now for example trying on a Dutch IP, i get redirected to the EU site if I try to visit pokerstars.es, but not from a german or norweigan IP.

Putting my hands up, in restrospect when i said this:

I was wrong here. I did not anticipate PS opening up registrations on either ES or on FR, I dont think anyone saw that coming. I should though have said it was at least technically feasible, but I said as much about Winamax's situation.

But what is the incentive of Row recreational players to join this smaller pool when they can already play on a bigger sites like .eu? The ones I see exploring this are regs looking for softer games I guess.

Im getting redirected to .eu with my german ip, same for a buddy who just tried. Any idea how I can download the .es software to try if it actually works?

Right I mean I think you've answered your own question there. That's why I do find this quite an unexpected move from PokerStars.

One thing PS might be motivated by here is they want the numbers to look good, e.g. show big growth in rev figures, cover big gtds, see increased signups and traffic etc, to show how important shared liquidity is.

Yeah i too now get redirected on a German IP. You could try over a VPN or a web proxy I guess - but i don't want to get involved helping people download the client if right now PokerStars is trying to prohibit it. Maybe email support and ask?

Are direct $ transfers from stars major platform to es/fr possible?
If yes: Is there a fee on it for conversion to €?

Hi,

Could anyone link me to the download of stars.es? I can't reach the . Es site it seems.

Thanks!

Not sure if ROW can really play on ES when already having a COM account. I get the message to go on COM when trying to log in or to create an account with my on COM registered email.

yes, is a little software, but at the end hourly is almost same cause you have higher rake, less games per hour and tax at some point if you are regular winning player.

but why I prefer to play on .FR over .EU is that is less favorable place for:
a) operating for big stable (exactly because of tax issue) which make game simply more friendly and human. I prefer to play with creative player (even if he is better than me) than with bunch of regfishes horses which are not able to do anything outside of box and only fallow line-up orders from their "gurus". is simply not fun to play with them.
b) less bots, as is more difficult for old soviets countries to create fake accounts and withdraw money as their is double risk of funds to be frozen, once from PS and once form bank (all money from .FR need passing trough bank account located in EU when withdrawing)

from two above, I prefer play with bots than with regfishes. I don't know why..? maybe because I find it more noble to beat some artificial program (and his creator) than some dumb ass regfishes.


and what is concerning a step from PS to marge .fr and .es market and allow ROW to play on .ES... at the end situation will come to it's equilibrium. some regs/stables will move to Spain in order to find softer games (they look for potential coming form French fish here). 500$ spins are now alive so the best regs will move up. + there Italy where many players/stables are already have found it's own happiness (soft games and tax free). all this will make lobby on .com simply better. maybe is time to back after all..?