by Mario Alfonsi | Published on Jan 30, 2012 | Updated on Jan 30, 2012Internet poker laws, as much as we hate them, are everywhere. In virtually every poker country selection, there is some special requirement or restriction for players who wish to play poker online for real money. France, a nation who does have legal poker, is one of those countries. The French are ok with online poker, the only requirement is that the site be approved by French authorities and be based in France as well. PokerStars is one of the big name online poker sites who thrives there, except in France PokerStars must operate under a .fr tag instead of PokerStars’ regular .net tag. This means that PokerStars in France is available only to those in France.Recent news has given us information that Belgium may want to have their online poker regulations work the same way. If this were the case there is no way playing online poker in Belgium will any longer be a good time. Think about it, with a population just barely over 11 million, Belgium will simply not have enough poker players to keep all the sites loaded and running at all times. Belgium’s 11 million person population pales in comparison to France’s 65 million people, and even French poker is not doing particularly well currently.Even if companies were able to get Belgian-specific licenses, what kind of big name poker brand would want to go in to a market that has such a small population, and an even smaller poker-playing population. And even though there are not many poker players in Belgium, there are some, and there are pros who would essentially be put out of a job and forced to move, much like it was when US authorities cracked down on gaming there. This is yet another example of a nation’s governing body attempting to completely ignore it constituents in pursuit of some higher, unexplained, goal.
