A snowball effect is happening in France over their new online poker regulations that require online poker sites to purchase a special –and expensive—license, and pay taxes to the French Government, in order to offer their services to French poker players. Additionally, players are only allowed to compete against other French residents at the online poker tables.

So, when PokerStars.fr started passing the cost onto its French customers in the form a massive rake increase players became outraged, and many have started boycotting the site –which is also a boycott of the French laws governing online poker.

The interesting tidbit is how French poker players are boycotting the PokerStars.fr site: In lieu of cancelling their account or not playing on the site players have decided to “Sit-Out” at the PokerStars tables! Therefore, what you have is a number of full tables, with the entire table “Sitting-Out”!

PokerStars has stated it has been losing money from the French leg of its operation –even before the boycott—and plans on releasing financial information to prove the point. PokerStars has also stated it would speak to France’s Gaming Regulatory Board, known as ARJEL, in hopes the licensing fees, and possibly taxes, could be lowered.

Meanwhile, French Poker Players now face, is trying to find the Best Online Poker Sites for them to play on.

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Tags: ARJEL, french poker, French poker players, PokerStars.fr

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 11:20 am and is filed under Online Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.