Online poker room PokerStars has informed Czech players that it is set launch its .cz website on Thursday, February 16. The operator was granted a license by the local gambling regulator last month, thus becoming the first international brand to be admitted to the newly regulated Czech market.
The Czech Republic joined the cluster of European jurisdictions to regulate their markets in a manner compliant with EU requirements on January 1, 2017, when its newly crafted gambling law came into effect.
Despite the new set of regulations, local authorities were criticized heavily by the Transparency International non-governmental organization for failing to restrict unlicensed operators from admitting local players. It is still unknown what actions the country has undertaken against violators, but TI’s Czech branch is set to review the development of the online gambling industry in April or precisely three months after the organization’s first call for measures to be taken.
PokerStars had previously operated in the Czech Republic but left the market ahead of its regulation. It has become common a practice for the online poker operator to avoid unregulated markets or rather ones on the brink of regulation. It has a dark blemish to clean from its reputation after it was found out that it had offered real-money gaming options to US players after a federal ban on any kind of online gambling activities had been introduced in the States back in the mid-2000s.
Well-aware of the gigantic potential of the US market, PokerStars is certainly longing for a return. In fact, the world’s largest poker room made a first step toward achieving that goal by entering the New Jersey regulated market last spring. Given the fact that a number of states are currently considering the legalization of online poker, that first step was a particularly important one.
Last week, the European poker community woke up to see the somewhat unexpected news that PokerStars has decided to restrict its French website to players located in France and the country’s overseas territories only. There were two possible interpretations to that decision. One was related to the anticipated launch of an online poker shared liquidity network between several ring-fenced European markets. The other involved a scenario in which the operator wanted to prevent less experienced players on its .fr website from being preyed upon by sharks. PokerStars itself cited the ever-changing regulatory environment as the sole reason for its recent move.
