From Last Week's Discussion Of Money Back For Losers To This Week's Let's Have A Government Funded State Poker Service, Finland Keeps Them Thinking!

To add to the often confusion of what Finnish online gambling policies can amount to, fuel has been thrown on the fire as Finland's culture and sport minister, Stefan Wallin, comes out with the suggestion that the government itself should run an online poker service. This he believes will draw possible gamblers away from putting their money in foreign poker websites.

With an eye to the possible funding of public services and a war against gambling addiction, according to Newsroom Finland the minister would be happy if the state's lottery and betting monopoly, Veikkaus, or the Slot Machine Association (Ray), one or the other, took over responsibility for regulating online poker.

Wallin is reported as saying that rather than trying to fight off the growing popularity of online poker, the right thing to do would be to make available to players a legal and responsible alternative. The responsible part according to Wallin would be through placing an 18 year-old age limit on players and by requiring that they identify themselves.

The report seems to think that Wallin is thinking about the state monopoly model employed in Sweden when he stresses that the Swedish state-owned lottery and gaming group, Svenska Spel, has been authorized to make poker services available over the internet. Apparently this approach has been met with much success.
 As recently as last week, the Finish government is reported to have been making a study of a report commissioned by Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health card out through the services of a university working group. The report proposes that the country’s Lotteries Act be fortified so as to be able to fight against underage gambling and that in addition, identification devices be added to online games. It was also proposed that gambling advertisements permitting online gambling be made objects of state restriction, and there was a forward leaning suggestion that those players who loose their money might be allowed to reclaim their losses when the games are found to be illegal.

When measuring on a per capita basis, the Finish people come in in fourth place for the world as a whole when it comes to gambling expenditure. At the present time there are no restrictions being placed on Finns who may want to gamble online.

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