Cake Poker Drops France (Francais) Players
Written by Roger S | Friday, April 9th, 2010
Cake Poker announced today that they would be dropping all players located and residing in France. This includes all skin sites on the Cake Network such as Doylesroom, the Greek, Sportsinteraction, power poker and dozens more casinos and sportsbook that use the casino or poker platform for their players.
We received the following customer support response upon questioning Cake Poker about their French players.
“Due to new French legislation, players in France will not be able to play for real money from April 9th. Players will of course be able to access the Cashier after April 9th so that they can withdraw their funds. We are looking into obtaining the relevant licenses to adhere to the new legislation as a matter of priority and once the circumstances change, we will be in contact to let all players concerned know. We do hope to welcome French players back to our software soon. I apologize for the inconvenience caused.”
We further asked the following question but received a lack luster response. “Do you have any timeframe or do you know if players will be segregated into different player pools, ie: they will only be allowed to play at cakepoker.fr”.
“Apologies but unfortunately we have no timeframe for when we hope to welcome French player on CakePoker again but rest assured that we are working towards resolving this as soon as possible.Unfortunately French players will simply not be allowed to play in any real money games or tournaments.”
What feels eerily like the UIGEA that passed in the United States, many French players are unaware of the law about to be enforced, or what exactly it entails.
To summarize, France is forcing all gambling sites that want to accept players from France to obtain a license. While initially this meant gambling sites would have to disallow players from France for 6 months from playing at their site, that text was stricken and replaced with new text which is not much better. Essentially for a player from Francais to play at a gambling site, they must have signed up at the gaming site AFTER the site obtained the license.
While the text passed the Senate in February 2010, it just passed the “Assemblée Nationale” and is up for review by the EU and is expected to pass by the signature of the President by the end of this April 2010.
Six months ago, Compatiblepoker asked Pokerstars their plans for their French players. This was their answer back then. We are still awaiting and updated reply.
“We are working towards securing a French license and doing all that we can, but unfortunately I don’t have anything more to update you with yet.”
Bwin.com and Partygaming gave a similar type response 6 months ago. The only site to give us a positive response was Poker770 with the following message (6 months ago).
“Poker770 is entirely governed by the laws of Curaçao, the Dutch Antilles, and has an absolute right to offer,by means of a software, online poker games under the name of Poker770. Please note that there is no law forbidding french citizens to play on a poker site that functions under the laws of a country that authorized the site.”
We are currently waiting for updated replies from a multitude of gambling sites and will update you accordingly.
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· Written by Roger S · Filed Under Poker Gossip · Comments Off
