PokerStars Restricts French Online Poker Play

<img src="http://admins.liquidpoker.net/staff/Defrag/pokerstarstablerestrict.jpg" align="right" style="margin:5px; border:1px solid black;">Since June 24th, all French players are blocked from real money games of any kind on PokerStars.com. All because of a new set of regulations concerning poker put in place by the French government. Due to the importance of the news, PokerStars staff was very clear in regard to the most important detail to players: their money. “All money in PokerStars accounts is 100% safe and is available for withdrawal. You can choose to cash out now if you prefer,” was written on a note when French players logged into their account.

Other than cashing right away, they can opt to transfer their money into PokerStars.Fr, a room exclusive for French players. PokerStars.Fr operates in a similar manner as the Italian PokerStars room, which only allows Italian action. PokerStars staff is also promoting the site with some cool promos: “We will be running free tournaments on PokerStars.fr this weekend to win seats to live French Poker Series events.”

When we compare the traffic on PokerStars.com, looking at numbers from June 17th and June 24th, we can see the traffic suffered a drop of around 10%. On June 17th, the number of cash game players peaked at 40,943, while on June 24th, the peak was at 36,566. On June 23rd, the number of players topped out at 37,637. These two days mark the first time, since May 1st and 2nd, that the peak of real money cash game players stay below 40,000 for two consecutive days. Of course these numbers are just illustrative and are by no means proof that this small drop in traffic is caused by the block of French players.

As for tournaments, accessing the SCOOP series statistics, we can see that 27,316 players from France bought into a tournament at some point or another. This makes France the country with the fourth most participants, totalling 6% of the 462,000 field.

Don't we have some french SNE seekers? Kinda owned

wow.. i normally see ~180k+ players on at anytime. didn't realise that 75%+ were playing tourneys/sng's.

fuck, maybe i'm doing something wrong here? lol

sigh, this isn't good, less fish overall =[

IT SUCKS !

:/

mipwnya is french going for SNE but he lives out of the country

lame government action ><

are they blocked from pokerstars specifically, or online poker in general? Will we still see french players on party?

This is bullshit :/

In theory French players are only supposed to play on sites that have a French license and only Vs other French players - not only do we get owned by losing all the fish the French players get owned too as the government set a rake of 7% (5% for site + 2% tax) - AND I also here they are raking unflopped pots. This is not confirmed - just what I heard elsewhere (DC forum).

On June 26 2010 17:08 Grindasaurus wrote: wow.. i normally see ~180k+ players on at anytime. didn't realise that 75%+ were playing tourneys/sng's. fuck, maybe i'm doing something wrong here? lol

majority are idling not playing anything i think

2nd mail received recently :
PokerStars.fr is now fully licenced by the French authorities
+ Show Spoiler +

I really don't know what is the best for french pokerplayers to do to play poker now.
I just tried to sit at a table, and I have a message that says that due to government regulation gnagna I can go fuck my self.
nice...

oh noes ;(

And on the new site, there is very little informaton about rake (nothing at all from what I quickly saw), possibility of transfer from international software to new french one, and what about FPP ? ...
I guess I'm gonna mail them.

Is this goood or bad? The french fish are the best... they never get better

On June 26 2010 18:40 casinocasino wrote: Is this goood or bad? The french fish are the best... they never get better

Bad for non french players, but good for some french players. I mean, I don't consider myself as a good player, but definitely not a fish. So if I play on french pokerstars, there will be a high density of fish to make money from... but rake is high !

FUUUUUUUUUU

FFS what is the EU doing
i really dont like where this is going

they can only play vs. French players?!?!? What the heck is that?!?!?

does the higher rake mean you don't pay tax on your winnings anymore?

greek goverment is also planning on increasing taxes online starting from
online betstores. taxes like 9,5% that is ..