I think dutch players need to start lobbying here, also get a lawyer involved to get things straight.
I'm all for (dutch pro myself)

GG has been allowed from day 1 of legal gambling and they offer the most complicated and cloudy rakeback system

it would be insane to not allow bonuses on unibet or stars who deliver way more transparent bonuses. If they promise 30% you get 30% and not the gg system where they promise 30% but an invisble pvi makes it 10%.

btw when unibet re-opened in the netherlands i received 50 free spins. Surely this is advertisement and this was legal but rakeback isnt???

the dutch politicians who are working on this are so clueless and incompetent it hurts

I agree GG system is cloudy, why i'm not playing there.
At least they offer some rakeback though which was my point when talking to Unibet representitives. If Unibet would offer rakeback it would actually be attractive to play their 200 and 400 games

The KSA allows loyalty programs, but not entirely how it's shaped by Stars, I think. Not sure about Unibet though.

Quote KSA:''Uw bonusaanbod moet zorgvuldig en evenwichtig zijn. Bonussen mogen niet aanzetten tot onmatige deelname. Uw bonusaanbod moet dus terughoudend zijn qua vorm, doelgroep, inhoud, strekking, aantal en soort kanalen waarop de bonus wordt aangeboden. Het creëren van een sterk gevoel van urgentie door middel van een tijdelijk bonusaanbod kan aanzetten tot onmatige deelname en is dus niet toegestaan.''

I'm afraid this means no rakeback, because rakeback % is always based on the amount of rake you pay. This means that rakeback does encourage excessive participation. Especially the 10-40% bonus that should be cleared within a timeframe of 28 days falls into that category. I'm afraid we're getting ****ed twice by our government: (1) the return of Stars takes longer than is necessary, and (2) no reward system. Great stuff!

A solution would be to offer a flat rakeback percentage, which isn't increased/decreased by the amount of rake you pay. So 20-30% for every player for example.

great job government! dont allow rakeback so players go broke faster and winning players turn into losing players.

but what i really dont understand is that GG has been offering a very clear rakeback system for over a year (allowed by dutch government) with a lot of steps to get a higher rakeback after playing a lot more

how is this allowed and no once-a-month (maybe twice) bonus is insane

It does state that they can offer bonusses but this falls under advertisement.
So why doesnt stars offer the bonuses to dutch people but doesnt show it on the pokerstars .NL site and the dutch social media channels
Because age is an issue perhaps dont offer it to players under 23/24 as well since they are more susceptible to offers like this

Its also possible stars comeback takes so long because they want the same possibilities as GG

I can safely say that if all the legal sites like stars & unibet cannot offer a fair rakeback system while all the illegal sites offer proper rakeback I will be playing on every sketchy unregulated site there is.... and i assume the dutch government is not looking to promote this behavior.

PS: HC online (dutch skin of ipoker) also offers bonuses based on paid rake, but apparently its OK when the profit goes to the dutch government

We'll wait what stars and party will decide.

I'm sure they'd be willing to change their rakeback system to a more dutch friendly one (at some point, depending what they introduce to us in the first place). One where flat-rakeback seems to be acceptable in terms of legislation, if others are questionable according to their own legal team.

If not, it may be a good idea to consult with Pepijn Le Heux for some clarity, advice and strategy moving forward. A dutch lawyer with in depth knowledge about poker and legislation in The Netherlands. He has done quite a few cases throughout the years supporting dutch poker players versus our government. Done a ton of interviews back in the day with pokernews.nl. We may also have to work together in approaching the Kansspelautoriteit with our concerns.
Lets work together?

I've seen interviews with, and spoken to, pepijn before.
He is very knowledgeable about poker legislation in the netherlands.

The issue is he has no influence on the politicians who are working on legalizing the gambling market and handig out licenses
This is a group of notoriously stupid people (1 of which still claims she is in favour in banning all online gambling altogether) who should listen to people who actually have some knowledge but never do

When legal gambling was introduced last year ive read some papers from people who are qualified to talk about online gambling. They were asked by the government to provide their insights. At first I thought this was a good thing but it turned out to be a complete shill. They didnt listen to a single thing and went on to make every mistake they've been warned for.

I think pepijn is more qualified than every politcian working this case, to be fair we both are too. But i doubt any action will have a decent effect.

We are being led by idiots

for dutch speakers:

https://www.casinonieuws.nl/online/p...n-2023-online/

pokerstars likely to return in the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2023 !!!

extremely depressing

Exactly the news I was hoping for! I really love their transparency on the matter; they don't even give us a prediction about when they want to return in 2023. It could be December 2023 for all we know.

This **** sucks huge dick!

Really confused by this. What is going on behind the scenes we don't know? Even some really small and unknown casino's have been able to go through the certification process and are going live in The Netherlands. What can be going on at pokerstars HQ??

Can it have something to do with what is/isn't allowed in terms of rake back and promotions? For instance, Unibet doesn't allow dutch players to receive rakeback and doesn't let them participate in leaderboards, while at GGpoker Dutch players are included in all promotions. Maybe Pokerstars doesn't have the capacity to build a different promotion structure for Dutch players.

I think you should just get an account from a different country through a friend. Its not really a complicated setup, but its best to use somebody who knows whats going on. I could probably help to a few guys. Done that before without any problems even for myself.

This seems unlikely to me. If they are worried about breaking the rules concerning rewards/promotions they could just play it safe and have the same structure as they have in Belgium: no promotions/rewards at all.

I really dislike the fact that PokerStars hasn't come up with an update for over a year, and now they update about the matter in one or two sentences. This isn't even a proper update, because we're completely left in the dark about the return. It can be January or December 2023; we just don't know!

belgium players dont receive any rakeback whatsoever?

their new rakeback system quite easily leads to 30% rakeback, but if this will be forced to 0% i wouldnt play stars either way

yeah the lack of transparency makes me think the delay is more related to internal problems and/or mistakes made on the side of Pokerstars rather than on the government side of things. If all went well Pokerstars could easily communicate that they provided all documents for application and are currently awaiting certification decision. This whole situation makes me kind of wary for the future of pokerstars and the quality of their products.

Close to 0 rakeback in Belgium.

I would play at Stars - even without rakeback - because I play heads up cash. It's my only option!

while an unregulated but accessible site like wpn offers 29% and sites like pokerbros are so much softer

i cant imagine belgian pros taking the stars route then

That makes sense, although I would be careful with apps like Bros since there seems to be a good amount of collusion going on. Have to be really careful there.

Still, players can use accounts from other countries and it works perfectly if you have a good setup. You can also get all the benefits. Also there is lot more to poker than PokerStars.

i would imagine belgium doesnt only have the 0% rakeback for stars and not for other sites right?

as a dutch player only legal skin where rakeback is allowed is gg. ipoker, unibet etc dont have any or ~1%

That is why other-country registered account is your best bet. rakeback everywhere.

https://www.casinonieuws.nl/online/k...s-is-verboden/

does this mean the end of rakeback on all legal sites? like the rakeback program on GG? or pokerstars when they come back?

in that case im quickly moving to the "illegal" ones that offer 29% rakeback

it is over
No rakeback in the netherlands from now on

They literally destroyed some peoples profession. It doesn't make sense to keep on playing fulltime when you can get a normal 50 to a 100k payed job easily
unless you want to take less money and all the risk of winrates going down each and every year, on average

thank you dutch government, thank you rolf slotboom for not making an effort here

I am also fairly sure this was a lobby effort of holland casino and possibly unibet, to prevent stars and party from gaining leverage and destroy gg poker
by trying to push KSA here a little

VPN + registering mexican or any other allowed country where you can cash out to skrill and funnel into dutch bank is now the only option if you want to play on dutch licensed sites and not pay tax

That is, registering on pokerstars.com and partypoker.com instead of .eu/.nl once they have their license, so you can still make use of the reward system on the .com client.
or gg for that matter, which you could already do presuming they will remove cashback on the 5th of dec.

Wait, what kind of bonuses are still legal then? Aren't all sorts of bonuses a form of (indirect) cashback? Only deposit or reload bonuses? What about mission type bonuses? If you read the letter of the KSA you could easily interpreted that every form of bonuses can be considered illegal.

This whole legislation process has been one big cluster****