Poker Superstars
Phil Hellmuth
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Finland More Progressive for Poker than U.S. |
Once again, the United States show the egg on their face by falling in behind other countries more progressive and more 'truly freer' than we are. According to the word around the trough, Finland has recently announced they will be joining along with several other European countries who offer state-sponsored online gambling, finally cashing in on the scads of taxable dollars being spent in internet casinos rather than letting it go to some other country's budgets.
Several Finnish news services announced recently that this call for a Finnish government-run online gambling service was released by the country's Minister of Culture and Sport (yeah, they actually have that, pretty awesome), Stefan Wallin. No reports as of right now as to whether Mr. Wallin had become so supportive of the bill in hopes that he would be able to reserve his last name as his online screenname MINISTER WALL-IN. (Ugh, sorry couldn't resist that one.)
In a rare case of a politician actually making clean, logical sense, Mr. Wallin posted the following on his blog: "With the increase of online gambling, the number of problem players will just grow, while most of the profits flow to firms based in tax havens. A better solution would be to allow one of our national lawful operators, Veikkaus or RAY, to take the responsibility for Net poker."
A government Minister has his own blog? In which he speaks out in favor of gambling? Why are we so far behind these other countries???
Accordingly, the two major agencies that are responsible for gambling have shown due support in their willingness to get this matter up and off the ground. These agencies include the state-run Veikkaus Oy and the Finnish Slot Machine Association,
Raha-automaattiyhdistys (RAY).
It's not entirely a downhill battle, though. There are some dissenters in the Finnish political scene, who seem, like their American small-brain counterparts, to think that endorsing online gambling will cause some sort of wave of malice and addiction, in which millions will drop their diaper and mortgage money on pocket jacks.
The overall effort, though, is looking strong, and is another great step in the right direction for gamblers of the world, and specifically Finland poker players, if not quite the ones in North America.
January 26, 2008 |
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