PokerStars To Migrate Germans To The EU Platform

Online poker players that use the PokerStars platform will now be moved over to the European version known as the PokerStars.EU platform. The transition will happening at some point today on July 19th if it has not already occurred at the time of writing.

The transition is a compulsory measure; thought there will be hardly any change for the players at all. It will be essentially the exact same playing experience as before, it uses the same player pool as the .com version as well as the games are still the same and players will still continue with their individual accounts.

The only difference is literally just the jurisdiction, as PokerStars.EU holds its license in Malta and is regulated their too by the LGA of Malta. PokerStars original site is regulated in the Isle Of Man.

PokerStars.EU has been live since February 2012 and over time many players from EU countries have been moved to the appropriate .EU address. First it was Swedish and Finnish players; they were then followed quite quickly by Polish, Romanian and Slovenian players. In May Dutch players were then added and now in July we have the Germans coming across.

The Reasons!

The main reason for the changes was down mainly in part to PokerStars forward thinking, this would not be the first time they have benefitted from such a thought process. After the debacle going on in America regarding gambling laws, poker sites being closed down etc, PokerStars want to make sure it is following every possible law to the letter.

In this particular case it is for player tax issues, Malta is currently part of the European Union which means their players will not have to pay tax on any winnings. It has been said that in some countries players need to pay taxes on their winnings from sites that are outside of the European Union.

So this move was done to benefit their players, and to make sure there are no problems for the site in the future regarding taxation.

Any German players that try to log into the previous PokerStars client will be directed to download the new PokerStars.EU client, where all of their details will have now been passed to. As mentioned before, the transition is painless and takes just a couple of minutes, players will still keep all VIP status, their accounts and bankrolls still all the same as before.

Players will still be able to pit their wits against players from the .com version as it is all migrated and the player pool is identical on each.

Online gambling has become a bit of a political issue as of late, with a new Online Gambling Act put into action at the start of the month. This act has allowed for a very small number of internet sports betting licenses, though none for internet poker. This act hasn’t really had too much of an effect on players though as most poker sites are registered outside of Germany.