To all of you Dutch readers who have been hoping that your country would officially legalize and regulate online poker – keep hoping. The Netherlands Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a nationwide ban of online gambling “is not contrary to European law on free movement of services.” Not only will online poker remain illegal, but also additional steps will be taken to block online gaming providers from offering their services to the Dutch.

The government-run Lotto is the only entity that is legally authorized to organize gambling games, including poker, sports betting, and instant lotteries. Nevertheless, online gaming firms such as Ladbrokesand Betfair have offered internet gaming to residents of the Netherlands for years.

Ladbrokes, for its part, has been fighting the Dutch government on the issue, claiming that the country’s stance was in violation of European law. In a June 2008 interim judgment, the Supreme Court essentially called a “time out” in order to consult with the European Union’s Court of Justice about the free movement of services.

Two years later, the Court of Justice finally answered those questions, saying that the Netherlands’ government could ban online gaming if Dutch courts agree that the goal of such a ban is to stop gambling and reduce crime. Of course, the Dutch government now says that those were its goals all along and it is therefore in its rights to prevent its citizens from playing poker on the internet.

The process of implementing the ban is an entirely different matter. The ruling does not require the country’s internet service providers to block online gaming sites from streaming their services into Dutch homes. On the contrary, the gambling providers are the ones who must block the people of the Netherlands from getting on their sites.

This is just the latest chapter in the soap opera that is online gambling law in the Netherlands. Last April, Dutch banks were asked to start blocking financial transactions to online gambling sites. They were provided a “blacklist” of gambling sites, but the transaction blocking was voluntary.

This, interestingly, came one month following an announcement by the Dutch government that it was going to open up its market and regulate online gambling. The decision was partially a response to an August 2010 recommendation to do so by a commission set up by Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin.

The commission said in part that the government should “give up its barely-enforced monopoly and license a small number of online poker companies.” The regulations were supposed to take effect this year, and while nothing has been officially ruled out, the situation doesn’t look nearly as promising as it used to for Dutch poker players.

The Netherlands currently sits at #18 in the PocketFives Country Rankings, which is sorted according to the cumulative PLB score of the top 20 players in each nation. There are currently 775 registered PocketFivers from the Netherlands, and Joris JorizzRuys (pictured) leading the pack as the 66th ranked player on the PocketFives Rankings.

The country’s largest online tournament cash is by supa4real, who banked $340,025 for a runner-up finish in FTOPS Event #22 back in November 2009. The Netherlands (55,544 PLB score for its top 20 players) is sandwiched in between Austria (56,499) and Sweden (54,466) in the Country Rankings.

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