Governmental Regulation

Another EU member nation will add poker to its State run gaming site. This time Austria is seeking to control the revenues from online poker.

"Casinos Austria would shortly set up an online virtual poker room on its gambling platform Win2day. Casinos Austria has bought the technology for its new poker offering in Sweden. Casinos Austria would impose a new weekly limit of 800 Euros in bets by an individual as part of its effort to fight addiction to gambling."

As more and more European Union members opt for the State operated gaming sites over free market competition, it is becoming more and more obvious that there will be a boiling point in this trade war that will require the EU as a whole to decide if online gaming is or is not a open trade commodity.

The Balkanization of poker is becoming more and more a real possibility. If this happens everyone will be limited to playing online poker with only members of their own country or cooperative trading nations. The global freedom of the internet may actually meet its first defeat at the hands of governmental controlled poker games.

Turkish daily newspaper "Zaman" has reported that the Turkish government now intends to punish any residents caught playing poker on the internet. Caught that is, not playing on the Turkish government site.

The fine will be 100 Turkish Lira for every game they are caught playing. The article hinted that over 4,000 players have already been identified as illegal poker players and that, on average, they have been found to have played 12 games online or an average 1200 Lira fine. I guess multi-screening would be a bad bankroll choice in Turkey.

Remember the Turks are not against gambling and the country's IDDAA gaming firm is partially owned by the state. They only wish to keep foreign companies out of the Turkish market.

Isn't it great that more advanced, democratic governments like the United Kingdom, France, United States and Germany are not engaging in such over zealous regulation. Oh wait, they are!

Better that the locals play the Government's game, and so allow the Government to keep all and any profits. Either that or live in a country that prohibits online poker completely.