Chinese Black Friday - how big were illegal games?

Chinese government decided using poker applications will be illegal starting from June 1st. It applies to apps based on play money, so you may be wondering why the media called it “Black Friday” as it was the end of poker in China.

Playing online poker for real money in China is only possible in Macau and Hongkong. Chinese are very resourceful and they find ways to go around the rules. It is estimated that the gray market is worth ten times as much as the legal games, and those alone are equal to 28 billion dollars a year.

Chinese players were already using multiple methods to play poker online. Using VPN to access games on foreign websites or playing in online casinos that quickly disappear are some of the methods. The most popular is using play money to organise real money games, hence the super popular Poker Master App.

Basically it works like that. Players deposit money in the organiser's account and get a password to a private table on play money app. Then they use play money, but the chips are worth real hard cash. Later the host deducts the rake and pays out winnings.

The risk is obvious. Sometimes you may not be given the password and other times you may not see your winnings. The software was also quite bugged and not working at best every time.
Nothing will also protect players from cheats at the play money tables. You can create multiple accounts and no one will stop you. Some apps have some protection means, but in general they are not too safe. Concerns were raised due to massive multi accounting and collusion at most popular poker rooms.

Blocking the applications is another method the Chinese government uses to stop illegal gambling as it naturally cost the budget a lot of money.

Let's see what happens hah
They were already illegal

And China isn't Us there are many laws that are just not enforced, even though they are very strict on paper

I imagine the apps will be blocked from the app stores. Twitter and other sites are banned there and i think the only way people access them is through using a VPN, which would be a very inconvenient solution for poker players there. And not to mention the social media advertising ban..

i like it, more fish in 2025-2035 etc