Poker News

Online Gambling has been given the go ahead to privatise in France.  The market which is worth several billion Euro's finally opens its doors to the online poker and casino companies.  The bill passed with a majority of 299 to 223.  The governement have said that they will tax poker at 2% and other online gambling at 7.5%.  The government say a proportion of this revenue will be used to stop gambling addictions. 

The new law will block illegal sites and have controls of the movement of money between the French banks and the gaming companies.  Exactly what that entails it is not clear.  France has an established market that used its state run online gambling facilities.  This took 36.7 billion Euros worth of bets in 2008 and does not include the large amount of illegal online gambling that was taking place in France.  The new laws should hopefully come into effect by the start of the 2010 Football World Cup.  Betting on this huge event will be massive.  France are always one of those teams who  could be dangerous.