Expect it's a losing game. The more efficient and good gambling games are out there the more society as a whole loses. That's why it makes sense to have state monopoly on gambling but not on things like food, electronics, cars etc.
Even if you somehow see gambling as a legitimate business then still there is very little chance a country like Switzerland wins the competition to attract customers from the rest of the world.

It's a rational policy and it's beneficial for the country and people living there. You can make an argument that freedom to spent your money wherever you like even harming yourself is more important but it doesn't make the policy of banning offshore providers irrational. It's just a call based on different assessment of values.

You're just taking mental health lightly. I hope you never see the day when someone close to you is taking advantage of for the case of silly game and end up with permanent damage. It's easier to learn about those things by reading than from experience so that's what I advise you to do.

Ok guys, any idea how to play online poker once July comes around and sites are definitely blocked ? Everybody says it's easy to circumvent but using a VPN is always against TOS so it is a big risk (hello Gordon Vayo) and I guess it would be hard to cash out with a swiss bank account number... I thought our government would prevent us from going on international sites but I wasn't expecting poker rooms to actually block us. I tried to open an account on Winamax but they blocked us already. Also tried to access pokershares which is also blocked already.

I'm guessing it's maybe possible to play on sites that accept payment via crypto like ACR but I really really really don't wanna play there...

Any ideas ?

Thanks in advance guys, cheers.

choG

It's pleasant to see some people having link with reality, thank you.
And yes, 250millions is a hugely overestimated, faked number (including EVERY way to "wager" money on Internet : sports bet, casino games, random lotteries AND poker in a very marginal way) and no rational debate could take place since government only let its voice being heard.

They proposed the law this way : "Would you like to get 250 millions more in our social system, or not ?"
This is absolutely fallacious and misleading, but any people who doesn't care about gambling will vote "yes", it's a given.

Well, since only land-based swiss casinos can offer online services from July 1st and none of them will have their own software, it's up to the poker rooms to deal with them and try to reach a license agreement.
Sadly, it should cost a lot and only huge rooms like PS, PP, 888 will potentially enter the market, so bye bye new RIO, MPN and my fav places...
We can only wait and see what will happen on July 1st but we should expect to have at least 1 place to play I guess.

The thing is, I'm not even sure we'll get one. As you said, Swiss casinos don't give a ****, they just wanted to steer people away from Internet and even big companies don't seem too interested.

It looks really bad for us...

The worst part is that the casino based offer in Switzerland is so bad (at least in the western part) that if I have to play in a casino, I'll do it in France, this is surely going to bring back a lot of money into the Swiss economy, well played...

How is the law, does it give the opportunity to have shared liquidity? Maybe they could join the France-Portugal-Spain market, if it had Switzerland and Italy joining it could become an interesting player pool.

Of course much less liquidity than the international market, but if only residents from these countries could play I think it could be interesting enough.

I don't think anyone has an answer to this yet. According to articles, Stars and Ipoker applied for licences.

Btw, I can log into pokershares.

Only land-based casinos can apply for an extension of their license to offer online poker. It says they're allowed to collaborate with with a foreign site as long as it respects some criteria. So, in theory, we might join an existing market but it seems like a lot of work for so few players. I hope I'm wrong.

@ratslla: where did you see that pokerstars applied for a license ? I'd be interested to read that article. I've contacted them about that and they pretty much said that had not yet decided what they were going to do about swiss players. For pokershares, after seeing your message, I tried on my phone and it works, I'll try again from my desktop tonight, the other day it literally said that my country was not allowed

Most popular one:
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2018/...land-32740.htm

Thanks, this is actually pretty reassuring !

Party and Betfair banned swiss players already. Hello to scammy Asian sites

I was on quickchat with stars support today and "Alex" told me Italy, Portugal, Spain and France have different licences. Even that Italy and Portugal will join PokerstarsEurope is far away. If Switzerland will join in 2xxx is very unlikely.
Onlinepoker is absolutly dead in our country. But who cares!