News

Sunday, 04 July 2010 11:05

When the new list of France's approved and licensed gambling operators did not contain Pokerstars, many were worried but it appears those worries were unfounded.

With the new rules governing gambling operators recently having been created in France, poker networks initially seemed to have a rough deal especially as the largest of the networks, Pokerstars, had not been included in the line-up. This worried the millions of poker players living in France who were members of the site, as it seemed they were about to run afoul of the laws. However, Pokerstars were not rushing into any deals until they had seen what was involved in the licensing issue and were just biding their time until they were completely sure about all aspects of the new laws.

Now they are well and truly open for business in France with a license of their own and a huge player base that is itching to get down to playing some serious poker.

The online gambling industry has run into problems with many different governments around the world. While some are friendly towards online gambling, others are hostile and until very recently, France was among the former group until it set up their Autorite de Regulation de Jeux En Ligne (ARJEL) to regulate online gaming and that included online casinos and poker rooms. The rules were tightened up and the only way in which foreign or home based gambling operators could continue to provide their services to French citizens was by obtaining the correct license, for which strict guidelines had to be met.

Undeterred, many operators applied for licenses and many were granted to those that met the guidelines. That included several poker networks so it came as a surprise to many that Pokerstars had not appeared to have joined in at the start. That has been rectified now that it has become clear that ARJEL is running things to the satisfaction of Pokerstars and their management, who applied for their licence on 19th May this year and have only recently had that application granted. This allows the company to operate their website in France with the pokerstars.fr domain and legally accept French players.

There are some drawbacks here and the major sacrifice was that cash games cannot yet be offered. This is waiting on the decision of the French Government to publish their set of rules and regulations that will pertain specifically to the game of poker. While this waiting game is played, members of Pokerstars may still enjoy playing free money tournaments as well as sit-and-go’s upon signing up and many feel it is only a matter of time until the game gets the green light to be offered to cash paying members too.