In my opinion the only persons installing the .fr software (which isn't that easy tbh) not resident in France are mostly people that actually are making a profit. Thus it would make sense to block out people that make recs loose faster and are withdrawing from the site. The rake generated from those players are less rewarding than the other options.

although this may be true it has nothing to do with it. this new change has everything to do with the impending linkup of the multiple countries.

winamax has gone on a hiring spree in .it.es and .pt as well so the operators obvious know this is going to happen.

and winamax claiming they dont plan to do the seem means nothing really. they could put out the same mail tommorow or 6 months from now

How do you know this?

Well I wouldn't call it hard either... But I do agree that if a recreational player, let's say from Germany, has an option to create an account on .COM and .FR, he's gonna choose .COM. Rarely both or .FR only. And people creating both accounts, or only .FR are likely the ones profiting from the games.

But I don't really see the logic behind this for tournaments. Sites want maximum volume in tournaments, and that's it. They're huge variance games anyway. Does someone really think that if a French recreational who binks 100k+ with a 10€ satellite entry, wouldn't cash out majority of it? Obv some of that money will keep coming back to the economy is she's/he's a losing player, but it's rare to see those "ok time for highest cash games or HUSNGs" anymore.

If someone is handy with perl or grep, here's some data from past tournaments I've played on .FR. I'm curious what's the ratio between French and foreigners is.

http://pastebin.com/1246YKcM

http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-dep...ean-expansion/

So I'm assuming UK is gonna be ring-fenced and moved away from .COM pool? Seems weird they would keep them in two different pools?

why would you assume this.

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i think last week pokerfuse had an update regarding portugal and they want some sort of 'white list' markets. so i can't imagine france shutting down (fencing down?) while other would to change anything. interesting point here was, that a potential market-share with UK was a topic of negotiation. so that it's possible to see 'world wide' and 'fenced' tables within the client. can't recall the details, but if i'm not wrong the author of the article is quite active here, so hit F5 for more details

besides that, given the information about winamax, it seems more likely that PS is doing this to be ready for a FR/IT/PT (ESP) market rather then get rid of customers. on the other hand, i remember that they said good bye to the Austrians b/c they had to pay double taxes for them.

Would they be honest about it though?

well such statement should always take with a grain of salt. main reason is, that the social media guy couldn't be ware of any long term plans (or what these imply). and there's also the simple fact, that plans can change (e.g. when winamax gets licences in Portugal, Spain and/or Italy) ... anyway, i'm pretty sure it is not a straight out lie and winamax has no imminent plans

Just a guess based on the Winamax segregated pool thing (France, Italy, Spain, UK). I wouldn't see why the same country legislation wouldn't apply to AmayaStars as well? And if UK players are allowed to access UK+FR+IT+ES pool and UK+worldwide, shouldn't other countries have access to FR+IT+ES pool also?


This could be a very certain possibility. Tbh, I don't see why it would be in any sites interest to have smaller player pools. I read from somewhere, that big issue with shared pools was an agreement on how games are being raked. For example .FR market has the insane preflop rake structure, where as .ES & .IT don't (at least to my knowledge). So if French gambling authorities got what they wanted (to keep the preflop rake and still join a segregated pool with other EU countries), it would make a lot of sense to move other players from Germany, Finland, Sweden etc to another "skin" (e.g. Stars.PT) where these customers are not subject to preflop tax rake.

Gotta hope this is the case.

EDIT: Winamax actually changed their normal tables from 40bb-100bb to 25bb-100bb buyin. Which seems like a ludicrous move considering they already have 5bb tables. Does anyone know if .IT, .ES or .PT has 25bb minimum buy-in requirement? I'm anticipating if this is some segregated pool legislation thing?

Min Buy-in limits on PS.es

6-Max (all stakes/NLHE and PLO) 40BBs (there are no full ring tables)

Zoom (all stakes) 50BBs

Capped Tables 20BBs

I think its quite a bad assumption not really sure of the logic actually and there is some confusion here.

As UK is not anything to do with segregated pools, UK players cannot play on any of those sites/markets. UK players don't have access to those sites so not sure where this came from. (I am UK player and was barred from those sites when UK was legalised gaming)

Ironically the opposite is true players anywhere in the world except banned countries can play on .fr if they have a euro bank account and UK players cannot. Nobody except Spanish and Italian residents can play on the respective sites at the moment.

The only reason those france pool is segregated from the UK even is due to the way UK players/stars pays tax compared to the other sites not due to the way UK is set up.
I think stars would pay tax twice on a UK player playing on .fr for example (due to the way French players are taxed)

I see no reason whatsoever UK would be it's own player pool. It has been legalised for last 2 years already with no issue and the pool is not big enough to sustain liquidity anyway.

hopefully someone like hood or Richas can come in clarify/confirm this.

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Used simple regex, maybe its not 100% correct

Algeria - 1 - 0.02%
Chile - 1 - 0.02%
Kazakhstan - 1 - 0.02%
Lebanon - 1 - 0.02%
Mayotte - 1 - 0.02%
Moldova - 1 - 0.02%
Iceland - 2 - 0.03%
Indonesia - 2 - 0.03%
Andorra - 4 - 0.07%
Thailand - 4 - 0.07%
Australia - 5 - 0.09%
Macedonia - 5 - 0.09%
Martinique - 5 - 0.09%
Colombia - 6 - 0.1%
Uruguay - 6 - 0.1%
Cyprus - 10 - 0.17%
Belarus - 11 - 0.19%
Canada - 12 - 0.21%
Guadeloupe - 14 - 0.24%
Serbia - 16 - 0.28%
Luxembourg - 18 - 0.31%
Reunion - 23 - 0.4%
Mexico - 25 - 0.44%
Norway - 27 - 0.47%
Switzerland - 31 - 0.54%
Ukraine - 34 - 0.59%
Croatia - 36 - 0.63%
Russia - 37 - 0.65%
Slovakia - 38 - 0.66%
Brazil - 45 - 0.79%
Poland - 62 - 1.08%
Latvia - 67 - 1.17%
Ireland - 79 - 1.38%
Malta - 108 - 1.89%
Hungary - 127 - 2.22%
Finland - 174 - 3.04%
Sweden - 193 - 3.38%
Netherlands - 225 - 3.94%
Lithuania - 248 - 4.34%
Germany - 285 - 4.99%
France - 3611 - 63.16%

i think ezdonkey was referring to a statement from me and i was referring to an article, which i think hood [forgot his 2p2 name] has written ... the FR/IT/PT/ES plan is really old, but UK seems to be interested to join in too. they do, they won't leave 'ROW' but offer separate tables (which at least seems the most logical explanation).

normally i would say, until it's not announced, it will take ages, but PS announcement could be a hint that a new market is coming this year

Much love for this

winamax doesnt allow atleast one eastern euro country to create any new accounts tho old ones remain unaffected (ppl are prolly already selling/buying accounts). dunno if any more countries are affected and also dunno what the reason is, but pretty sure 90%+ ppl from this country are regs.

So there's quite a few strands here. Quick brain dump of a few things:

- Euro regulators have been meeting every six months for years and every time say that shared liquidity is on the agenda. Back in 2013 and it was even "imminent" between Spain and Italy, but that fizzled out. This time around though France actually change it's law so that cleared a hurdle. FR+IT saying an agreement could be in place in H1 2017 but i'm skeptical of that timeline.

(I hope it is FR+IT+ES because then we can refer to it as dot-FRITES which is cool. Nothing quite so nice with PT in the mix though).

- The conversations have also involved the UK regulator. As noted, that's odd because the UK has shared liquidity regulation. In theory, would could have a scenario where an operator like PokerStars runs a PokerStars.UK that has tables both on the dot-com pool, as well as tables on a dot-FRITES pool. That idea was even thrown around in the UK+NJ scenario.

- When it comes to it, it will be able which countries sign which bilateral agreements. Likely FR and IT first; PT has submitted fresh amendments to permit shared liquidity to the EC and seems keen. Quieter on the Spanish front. Maybe the UK never enters into these agreements. And if they do, maybe operators ignore that opportunity.

- Tax problems still need to be resolved too. That's why Winamax didn't apply for a UKGC license but booted off the Brits, and why PS.FR did the same. Revenue from a UK player would face double taxation (Point of Consumption tax to pay the UKGC - plus tax to ARJEL in France). That's untenable. These bilteral agreements need to resolve this problem.

- Winamax did recently start advertising for staff in PT, IT and ES; in the past they've said they've been interested in the IT market if shared liquidity would happen. So they are certainly staffing up at least as a preparatory measure.

- I think quite possibly this is just some housecleaning from PokerStars and not directly related to some imminent expectation of a dot-EU shared liquidity scenario. I wouldn't be surprised if the decision to allow non-French on dot-FR is seen as a mistake that they wish they could reverse; it doesn't make a lot of sense from a player ecology perspective. Also they'd much rather take revenue from a German player under their IOM or MGA license and pay little to no gaming revenue, than face the high tax in France.

- We saw that in Spain. Initially anyone could sign up to PS.ES (also 888.ES) but both operators changed their policy when they (imo) saw how suicidal it was for ecology.

- One reason why they might have allowed this for so long in France is to try and stay competitive with Winamax (which is open in other markets, like Germany) but today traffic is almost half. With the end of the French Poker Series (and no French stops yet on the Festival tour) I wonder if this is just a business decision primarily cutting costs in France with the added benefit that if a FRITES scenario does happen, they are better prepared for it.

Is there any idea how this is going to happen in practice? Is it safe to play on sunday or monday and are people allowed to finish tournaments they started etc.?

They don't have a UK licence so are not allowed to serve or advertise to the UK market.

To complicate matters a bit the taxman & regulator is ok with NOT implementing geo-location to block all the time. They are OK wth tourists or visitors using other sites as usual, the quid pro quo is that when Brits are overseas and it is legal they wwant the tax money from that "overseas" play.

No - the .co.uk client and site is just an administrative convenience. The UK regulator has some pretty detailed rules on info provision and more, this way they can make sure the UK players get the UK legal experience without also imposing that on the whole of .com.

The actual play is .com and UK is fine with other countries unless they are Black like the USA. They need to have a legal argument that it is grey enough to be legal which is OK all the EU but getting dodgier for Aus by the day.

If the UK could get in there you would have pomme frites.

Can they really disallow other EU citizens who live in one of those countries from playing?

Right now, foreigners living in Italy are allowed to open an account on Pokerstars.it as long as they have an Italian tax ID and some kind of Italian government ID like a drivers license. I don't see that change.

>"Euro regulators have been meeting every six months for years and every time say that shared liquidity is on the agenda. Back in 2013 and it was even "imminent" between Spain and Italy, but that fizzled out."

Yeah this is the operative line when it comes to the probability of a shared market between 4 countries - if it was that difficult for just 2 to come to an agreement imagine four of them. And some of these countries are not exactly renowned for their compliance with existing EU protocols, much less help in creating new ones. As an example Spain has the biggest cumulative fines administered by the commission within the EU - the figure quoted was staggering.