Hello,

I am not sure if this is right forum section.
I just want warn players from Latvia about new changes in law what was accepted short time ago.

Link to full story. (Latvian)

Cliffs:

*Latvians are now prohibited from government to play on unlicensed rooms (99% rooms)
*Any banks/finance institution need block credit cards payments to unlicensed rooms from residents and report government about people who is trying to play in theses rooms.
*Players can be punished for playing in unlicensed rooms up to 350 euro. (Regardless results)
*Gov. Gambling institution now have access to ISP data and can request data about any person who have been visiting unlicensed gambling websites.
(Internet experts warn about it being similar to China/Russia)
*You pay tax on all winnings (withdraw) irrelevant how much you did deposit.

Be careful.

Out of interest what are the 1% of licensed rooms available to Latvians?

Any room can theoretically buy license for 200-400k (+Tax ongoing after).

Only licensed network is MGN (BetSafe ect.) offered by 2 different licensed internet casinos.
All major rooms allow to play people from Latvia but is unlicensed rooms and government says it is hard to restrict or go after big operators, they have decided go after players.

damn, thats sad

Yes. Alexa play despacito

Why not just move to one of the other 27 countries you're free to go to and play your pokers from there?

People have lives and don't care if they can't play online poker which is a shadow of its former self? Would you move if your couldn't play online poker, is your $1 sngs worth the relocation?

Latvian poker players that play on Bitcoin rooms = unaffected.

can a reg confirm that link in op is ok?

35th ranked web page in latvia and appears to be a government owned news outlet.

similiar law came to life in Poland 2 years ago, but eventually it amounted to nothing and everyone is still playing. Laws like that are waaay to expensive to actually enforce, they are just there to serve as a deterant.

Unles your government actually wants to go after poker players specifically.

Exactly my thought, same thing for regs and mostly bots from Belarus.

Latvian poker in a state of Rigamortis with this news

Does this have anything to do with bovada dot latvia?

That site has kavorka, a.k.a. "the lure of the animal."

WP sir.

You guys blaming specific countries for botting don't need to be rocket scientists to realize that moving botting to another country is super easy to do for someone who is in the botting activity. Even if there are any, botters won't give a **** about the law.
Sorry about the news, Latvia. Is your poker (or some other) community trying to do something to get the law changed?

People in this thread writing about `bots from Latvia` are either clueless, or self-interested. Give specific screen names, stats distributions, play volumes, and proof before you post your opinion based on nothing, but dog**** fantasies, before you write such ******ed generalization statements.

Im sorry that players from these countries annoy you and hit your bottom line, and you`d rather not have any Baltics/Belorus players on your tables at all (im not hyped about Belorus/Estonia dudes either, but im certainly not gonna post **** about them).

You can whine less, play more.

Has been like that for a while now. Doesn't really work as you can VPN.

This also has been in place already (blocking payments). No problems if use e-wallet.

Well, this sucks. I wonder if it's one time payment in year or can be fined several times? Also, do I get fined if I'm resident but playing from abroad, yet declare my gambling winnings?

Will VPN take care of this?

Have to pay income tax for 2018 already in a similar manner. No way I'm declaring "withdraw amount".

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Basically the only room that has licence is Betsafe (MPN), so winnig players will find a workaround. And there are what, couple of dozens, maybe a hundred poker pro's in Latvia? This law is so dumb my head hurts. Is it so hard to just set up a proper law where you pay income tax from gross winnings each year? Anything else is just unfair and leads to just not paying anything.

Yes, change is that now you are now legally responsible for playing on theses rooms (If you visit domains now via your regular connection you should see government link to law you are breaking and punishment for it) on unlicensed rooms. However it seem very hard to enforce it and in reality no one will get punished ever.
In Lithuania they still just block domains and you have no personal responsibility for playing there.

Biggest thing here is that Latvian banks will be sending to goverment way more information as it looks like.
Declined payments, deposits/withdraws from and to illegal gambling websites and "intermediaries" (not sure if it count relevant e-wallets).

I am very confused how punishment would be measured and how often it could be punishable. Most likely it will be too expensive to actually enforce it.

But about being abroad, I believe you are allowed to play from other countries - law reads "a person in the Republic of Latvia is not allowed to participate.../personai Latvijas Republikā nav atļauts piedalīties..."
But how do you proof you was abound? do you need change officially your address?

This is scariest one but also stupidest one.
Link.

If you read point 8 it says gov. can request information about everyone who visiting unlicensed gambling websites and ISP need provide it if they have it.
They need provide Personal information, IP, contact information and probably some type information on gambling websites visited or something.

If they decide go after anyone they probably target people with transactions in bank what have been reported to them. Looking for every person randomly visiting gambling website would be way too expensive or even impossible.

VPN is option. Prepaid internet is something you might want look into.

This is probably asked best to Tax specialist, it super confusing.
In theory i would need keep huge roll on MPN if i wanted play legally so I don't need ever reload roll because I would need pay extra tax for every reload i do. Not even talking about action being there.
In Lithaunia they are more reasonable and tax only gain.

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This made my day. Love a super deep cut Seinfeld reference.

I think VPN is supposed to keep ISP off your data but many poker rooms are against VPN...
[from Lithuanian poker forum]

Terrible news. There goes half the bot traffic on ACR.

I've heard that Latvian poker players are planning to move to countries such as Lithuania (they are not punishing you there and most poker rooms are accessible straight away or with a simple DNS change).

https://www.pokeriokarta.com/forumas...oker-laws-eng/

So i am gona get fined 350e for playing playmoney games on pokerstars seems fair