Contemplating

Bored at work (I have grafted like a bastard for the first 10 hours), I am sitting here wondering what is going to happen with online poker in the next year or so, there are so many directions is could take that it's pretty hard to fathom, so although these could be way off the mark and complete bollocks, these are my thoughts...

1. Good Scenarios - Europe: Recently there has been some movement in all the ring-fencing that was going on i.e. France, Italy etc and Pokerstars has helped convince these two governements that they cannot run a viable business with the tax rates they are charging and their licensing and as such there are talks of them merging into one, which may pave the way for slowly but surely allow them to start opening up to the rest of the Euro zone, which is fantastic for us because we all know how spewtastic both the French and Italians were when playing.

USA: They get online poker regulated and there are not ringfenced off to the ROW. Meaning we get thousands and thousands of casual donks once again hitting the virtual felt with us and giving us a licence to print money.

Obviously thats a very optomistic view, but with the Epic poker league stuff recently and such it really does look more and more likely the US are going to get their regulation sorted and get back online. Some even predict it could happen in 2011!!

There are various thoughts as to who would be the major online players, but I genuinely think Party will be there or there-abouts and almost definately a could of the big land based Vegas casino's. I think they will force pokerstars out of the market for X number of months to give the competition time to get on their feet. Just my opinion there.

2. Pessemistic view: Europe:  We have recently heard of the government thinking about stepping into look at online poker and the licencing and the way it was explained (or how I read it), that we too could go down the route of France and Italy and be ring-fenced off and they would use the excuse as to protect their citizens from situations like Full Tilt, because the Sites would have to have a specific UK Licence and be based in the UK (which is pretty tough given our tax rates).

I worry that they will just see pound signs, especially in times of economic hardship and whether it's in our interest or not, screw us over. IMO that has a very real chance of happening under this government, but I really hope it doesn't.

As for Europe, I think more and more countries could follow the lead of France and Italy because they are so concerned with money leaving their economies at this time and make sure that the money and taxes all stay sort of 'in-house', which will obviously shrink the overall player pools even more!

In regards to the US, IMO they are so fucking corrupt, that it will be basically about who has the most money and political influence as to what happens, nothing to do with their citizens. It could very well head down the route of inter-state poker, where players could only play online vs other players from their state, which would suck balls for everyone else. It could also be just US only, it's so vague.

I hear that it has sort of been agreed poker can come back online as long as it's regulated, but there ais lots of in-fighting in regards to the actual wording of these regulations and basically all because of the financial impacts to the bigger corporations, obviously everyone wants their slice of the pie...

It's a serious transitional period for online poker right now and if it goes the right way for the players it could be incredible for us.

Fingers crossed eh?!