Very typical of a socialist democracy style of government. The government takes over and there are very few individual freedoms and government bogs down everything with lots of red tape. With the inauguration of president Obama, its exactly the direction the USA is going.

hi, can you link to the details for this please?

doesn't this make a complete farce of their pretence at why they cut off france from rest of world (bots was the argument in parliament)?

are you familiar with the UIGEA at all? This is pretty much every government in the world now, get used to it.

Exactly, when I'm table selecting I sometimes keep wikipedia open and look up people's location to see if they are in France... and no I'm not joking. Germans and Russians are all nitty now, the French are the last hope.

And I'm also curious about what Skallagrim asked, is there no PPA equivalent abroad?

I don't have the link, but that what I heard from very reliable sources.

If you have an adress in another country and use a VPN you are fine. Thats what im doing atm

This would make some sense.
The can insist on licensing all gambling sites operating in France on 'health & safety/protection of citizen grounds' but can't stop other EU citizens from playing there due to free movement of people EU regs.

This is not my understanding of the new French law. The reports I reviewed pretty clearly indicated that the new sites would only be open to residents of France. Of course, I have forgotten almost all of the French I learned in college and am relying almost solely on second hand reporting.

As I understand it the new French sites are just that: French. French residents only. You can be a foreign national and play, but only if you are residing in France at the time.

I would be very interested to be proved wrong on this; any one got an actual site to a provision of the law that would allow the French sites to accept players from outside France?

Skallagrim

Stars have been granted their license yesterday (06/25) :

http://translate.google.co.uk/transl...2F&sl=fr&tl=en


I am not a law expert, can't say if under the Maltese license they can accept customers from other countries than France.

Looks like Fulltilt are still open for French players.


http://www.flopturnriver.com/blogs/author/givememyleg/

Please - keep your inane political agenda out of this.

The French government that introduced these laws is the most right wing one in ages.

It's the Republicans in the USA who inflicted both Prohibition and the UIGEA on the country.

And the free-est place on earth to play online poker is the UK (all sites legal + no taxes) - which has just had 13 years of socialist government (and they didn't touch online gambling).

Sorry your pet political hobby horses bear no relation to reality but there you go - that's what happens if you get your worldview from Fox News I guess...

mbpoker is right, there is nothing in the law forbidding licensed operators in France to accept non-french residents (even non-EU residents) on their French platform as long as they comply fully with the law and the regulations. One of the conditions to open an account is to have a EEA-based (European Economic Area) bank account so in practice it restricts the registration to EU residents.

This has been confirmed by the regulation authority (ARJEL) in their FAQ (cf. page 4) :

i read they werent.

The pokerstars.fr currently states:

Online currently: 35,893 players 1386 tournaments.

Obviously, they are showing their total international player pool on their French web site, not just players in France. Does this mean that French players on the French PS site will be playing with a combined international player pool? Have they found a way around the prohibition in the new French law?

Ps.com shows 94.396 players

The poker decree has not been passed yet (ETA June, 28th) as Malta commented on the French poker decree and French government can't pass it before that date to comply with EU regulations (1 month delay when another EU member comments one of your decree). Consequently, licensed operators can't offer real money games before that date, they only offer playmoney at the moment that's why the player pool is international (playmoney games are not subject to any regulations). I am no lawyer but I don't think there is a way to circumvent the player pool segregation as it's clearly written in the law.

99% sure that the players showed as online are play money players (we can still use play money with the rest of the world, yay).

Cash games are scheduled to start on June 29 on pokerstars.fr.

Thanks for this info Superbibi.

So a French licensed site can legally accept a UK player, but a UK licensed site cannot legally accept a French player .... that should keep the EU dispute resolution agencies/courts busy for a long time.

Skallagrim

Do the french sites accept US players then?

If you have an EEA-based bank account you can try on winamax.fr (it used to be an Ongame skin marketing aggressively the French market).

but what about full tilt?

-----> Politics

Although it isn't stated in the email, we have reports about people that can't play real money games anymore, probably new accounts created yesterday around the time they put the restrictions in place. My account is a year old and I can still play and other users with older accounts have tested depositing/withdrawing and it works fine. However, as they have applied for a license it won't be long before they're forced by the regulation authority to kick us all from the international platform.

I don't get it. Is there a large anti-gambling sentiment in France? Who is this law protecting? Is this just the French government legislating for the sake of legislating?

The French government has/had a monopoly on online betting and gaming although the laws were directed against operators of sites and not the players.
They came under pressure from the EU to open up the market to other bookmakers and betting organisations and this is their response.

Online gambling is now legalised but only if the operator is licensed by the French government and restricts access to the site to residents of France and french territories.
Oh, and pays tax.

The restriction is (probably) legal under EU law as it's being touted under 'Health and Safety' which is the preserve of the member states.
The French government argues that the restrictions allow it to prevent minors from underage gambling and protect people with gambling addictions

Also, restricting access to players on French territory is meant to give the French authorities a greater ability to police the sites to catch and prosecute cheating operators, players or bot programmers.

As a side effect it makes it easier to identify the players themselves if they next decide to tax winnings, although I'm sure that's not the real reason.
Currently winnings are tax free if you're a 'recreational' player - ie you have another, larger, source of income.