Made In Canada Poker

If you read this month's Bluff Magazine or Poker Pro (Canadian Magazine) they both have articles about online poker being legalized in Canada. What is being proposed and looks like it will happen is in the province of Quebec and the province of British Columbia (where I live) the lottery corporations are going to start running their own poker sites. All I can do is say wow. What took so long??

As we all know online poker is now a multi billion dollar industry so in my opinion it was only a matter of time before governments saw this as another cash cow. With spiraling health care costs and schools being underfunded governments have to get creative in ways of bringing in more cash. Canada like everywhere else has a aging population with not enough young people replacing us old folks so cash needs to be created somehow.

Do I think this is a good thing?? Mostly yes. I have some doubts but but if you look at all the money going off shore to these sites why not keep it in Canada and use the RAKE to pay some of our health costs. Makes sense to me.

As you know I am not a great lover of online poker I much prefer playing live but some of my doubts about online poker were because of these sites not being regulated and controlled here in B.C.. This may solve some of that problem.

The articles explain that users must be residents of the individual provinces to play on the site which is going to limit the growth potential somewhat but hey its their site they can run it anyway they want. The province of Ontario (our largest) will be watching with interest I am sure. If these two sites do get off the ground and create considerable revenue for the governments you can bet they won't be far behind in getting in on the action.

How will this affect the major sites like FullTilt and Pokerstars? Not much to start with but if it takes off and is successfull you can bet other countries will take note and want a piece of the action too. It may end up hurting a lot of the smaller sites too. Right now there are way too many sites. I can't even keep track of them all.

Is it good for poker?? In my opinion yes. It's going to bring poker even more mainstream publicity and also legitimacy. That is a great thing.

There of course will be people upset that the government is running poker sites and preying on peoples gambling habits but it's like smoking or drinking. People are going to do it anyways and people have to be responsible for their actions. I want the money to stay in Canada.

We all know the problems that Americans have had playing online so I am sure there will be considerable interest down south as to what happens up here.