SOURCE: Helsingin Sanomat

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The report does not specify exactly how such legislation would be enforced.

The Ministry is aware, for example, of the technical difficulties such a law would involve, and is therefore waiting to hear comments on the idea.

The Ministry suspects that in time other countries will follow suit and start drawing up similar laws.

The online poker operation is based on the same kind of pyramid system used in network sales businesses.

According to the social authorities, on the lowest levels of the pyramid are the gambling addicts, whose money the game organizer milks to pay the winners at the top of the pyramid.

The professor involved in the project also takes the weaker players’ side.

"If the damage caused to those at the bottom of the pyramid far exceed the benefits reaped by random players, something needs to be done", Kalle Määttä says.

Finns are quite eager players at online poker-tables; around EUR 150 million a year is thought to be taken by online poker firms from Finns alone.

Measured against head of population, the Finns are fourth in the world tables of spending on gambling.

Not everyone is able to keep it real or within reason: there are said to be around 40,000 people in the country with problems arising out of a gambling habit, or as many as in The Netherlands, a country with three times the population.

Online poker games are not arranged by Veikkaus, RAY, or Fintoto, who organize gambling within Finland, but there is no restriction on people playing on the net, using a credit card to provide the necessary funding to buy chips.

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