SOURCE: Helsingin Sanomat

The gambling pastimes of Finnish online poker addicts may become seriously complicated if the authorities’ latest plans materialize.

Helsingin Sanomat has received information, according to which the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is planning to introduce an amendment to the law on gambling that would enable Internet gamblers to claim back their losses.

The payer would be either the firm providing the online poker services, a credit card company, or the winning player in the game.

According to the Ministry, in practice this would mean that the foreign companies running the Internet poker services would in all probability prevent Finnish players from ever taking part in the game.

A player protected by such a law would be altogether too great a risk to the game organizer.

Poker’s time-honored tradition insists that all players pay up when they lose.

The idea of an amendment to the law on gambling is presented in a University of Joensuu report made public today. The Ministry commissioned the university to look into ways of protecting gambling addicts and children from the dangers of online gambling.

The idea was conceived by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health civil servants together with the compiler of the report, the University of Joensuu professor of Law and Economics Kalle Määttä.

According to Määttä, such a law does not yet exist anywhere in the world.

The idea of the law is not to force citizens to put shackles on their gambling, but merely to provide them with the opportunity to claim back the losses that they may have augmented, say, while playing online poker when drunk.

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