The problematic gambling legislation bill, also known as the UK Gambling Act, was finally implemented two days ago, which means that from now on, all gaming operators, allowed to provide their products and services on the regulated UK gambling market, will have to obey the new rules and regulations and pay higher taxes as well. One of the operators, awarded with a license by the UK gaming regulators, was Amaya Gaming – the company that manages the popular online gambling platform PokerStars.
Today is the day when all players, located in the United Kingdom and using the services, the platform offers, will have to move their accounts to the new domain, created with the aim of being compatible to the newly imposed regulations, the UK Licensing and Advertising Act contains. The name of the new domain is PokerStars.co.uk.
The reason why such a “moving” is needed is the requirement of the UK regulators that every gaming provider must be fully licensed. Plus, those providers that are given a license, are now supposed to pay the so called point-of-consumption tax, which was a subject to angry discussions and disapproving comments.
The local regulators promise that the change will be smooth and almost unnoticeable to the players. If they want to have access to their PokerStars accounts after 00:01 British Summer Time on November 3rd, they will be redirected to a web page where a new software is available for download. Once they are done downloading and installing it, they will be given access to their accounts and apart from the name of the new domain – PokerStars.co.uk, everything else will be the same.
Although the new owners of PokerStars promised to work towards the development of the platform and live up to users’ expectations, they succeeded in making the UK-based poker players discontent when they announced that the auto-rebuy option will not be available anymore during the tournaments that take place.
However, the managers have probably realized the negative effect such an alteration may have on the further development of the platform so they changed their mind. A company’s representative said that the options, mentioned above, will be available for those UK- based players who download the new software.
Despite the promise that the alterations will not affect the players in any way, the newly implemented taxes made PokerStars authorities increase the fees and the rakes in some games in order to cover the new expenses they have to deal with. What’s more, the UK branch of PokerStars is expected to charge the players rake on rebuys and add-ons.
In order to decrease customers’ dissatisfaction and make the players get used to the new fees, PokerStars is offering five freerolls of £1,000. They will be available in the period 3rd to 7th of November and every poker player, located in the UK can take advantage of them.
