No Polish Poker

In a law scheduled to take effect in August, the Polish President has banned online gaming in Poland

It has been a very intense time in the online poker world of late. It all started when the United States authorities effectively ejected the big poker rooms from the US market or catering to US players in any way. They then and charged 11 poker executives with a range of crimes including money laundering and fraud. After that scandal broke, Full Tilt Poker, the second largest poker site, ran into some truly massive problems, leading to the suspension of their gaming license by the Alderney gaming Commission. Now the Polish government has made playing online poker illegal thereby closing yet another national market to online poker companies.
The bill, signed into law by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, is set to come into effect within the next month. The law will make Poker and online casinos illegal though it won’t affect sports betting. The Polish government doesn’t look at sports betting and placing bets on games of chance as the same thing. The element of luck, which any professional poker player will tell you certainly does exist in poker, is considered to be the factor that swung the government in favour of this ban. Although there is the impact of random chance in all sporting events the Poles have made a distinction between an actual, live event and a computer programme.
The law hasn’t come without controversy however and it appears that it’s not just poker companies who are up in arms about losing yet another market. Polish professional poker players are going to be hit hard by the move and are likely to move away from the country for large periods of time to be able to continue their profession. Other countries in the European Union are expected to protest against the law in the European Parliament as they say it goes against fair trade agreements between countries specifically EU competition and trade law.
There are countries in the EU who have established regulated poker whereby the government, in effect, becomes a partner with the gaming sites in facilitating games for the citizens of that country only. Most notably Italy and France have such systems, they have done so in accordance with EU laws in contrast to Poland. Their systems allow for any site, to apply for a license to operate in their country. The European Commission is currently reviewing the law to decide whether the Poles are in fact breaching EU laws.