French Poker Players May Play at PokerStars French-only Site

Gambling, whether done online or in brick and mortar casinos is always a touchy issue everywhere. This is proven once again when the  French government banned residents of France from playing money poker games at PokerStars.com , the world's largest poker online site. 

A new French-only site was created to still allow residents of France to play at PokerStars, but with many restrictions. The site is in a new domain, pokerstars.fr and aside from its exclusively French content is almost a clone of PokerStars.com, the world's largest online poker site. A link to the site's English translation is available and the new site's visitors now run into over 100,000 at any one time.

ARJEL (Autorité de Régulation des Jeux En Ligne, or the Authority of Regulation of Online Games) grants PokerStars' owners the license to offer online poker games to residents of France. ARJEL is the government entity that is in charge of the France’s online gaming operations.

PokerStars started promoting the new site by offering free poker tournaments. PokerStars is a well-known online cardroom where winners can get entry to big live poker tournaments.  Now, you can play online poker for real money at pokerstars.fr, PokerStars owners having complied with ARJEL's stingent requirements.

While players were playing online pokers mainly for fun, points and ranking starting in late 1990s,  there were no issues with government agencies. But when online poker was played for real money starting Jan 1, 1998, owners of online poker sites gets continually hounded by government regulators.

Whereas other states in the U.S. proved to be tolerant of online poker games, the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled with finality that playing online poker is a felony.

France has, in effect joined the growing number of countries where playing online poker is both legal and regulated. The United Kingdom is deemed having the most lenient policies on online money games in general, including online poker.