Canadian Lawmakers "Have Bigger Fish to Fry" than Online Poker Players
The governments of some countries do whatever they can to prevent their citizens from playing poker on the internet. Others, such as France and Italy, ring-fence their residents. Meanwhile, Canadasits and watches its online poker players happily clicking away on the virtual flop, turn, and river. The country has become a haven for many professional American online poker players wanting to prolong their careers. But why is Canada poker’s nirvana? Check out a recent article from the Vancouver Sun.
While Canadian law states that only provincial governments may operate online gambling sites, there is some confusion as to where the gambling is actually taking place. Is the gambling in Canada where the bettors are or is it actually in the jurisdiction where a site’s servers are located?
Even if online poker is technically illegal, it does not appear to be at the top of the to-do list for Federal or provincial authorities, nor does the country’s populace really care all that much if people gamble online. In an article from this past Saturday’s Vancouver Sun, Stanley Sadinsky, a law professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario said, “For police authorities, it’s not their top priority.”
“They have much bigger fish to fry,” he summarized.
Plus, Sadinsky noted, it’s not like the police could feasibly go around and nab every resident who plays online poker. And even if they wanted to go after the operators of the sites, as the United States has done, then they would have to wait until one of them stepped foot on Canadian soil.
Canadian citizens take a similar attitude, said Paul Burns, Vice President of the Canadian Gaming Association: “There hasn’t been a huge public outcry. There’s a high level of acceptance of offshore operators in Canada.”
For his part, Burns told the Vancouver Sun that the Canadian Gaming Association would like it if the offshore sites were formally legalized and regulated in his country, as it would give players more security against cheaters and rogue operators.
None of this means Canadian authorities will never start cracking down on offshore gambling sites. Right now, only the Atlantic, Quebec, and British Columbia provinces have legal online gambling, but if more provinces eventually follow their lead, then they might want to protect themselves. “When economic interests begin to come into play, maybe that will be the greater incentive to deal with the offshore sites,” Sadinsky told the Sun.
With the gradual removal of the United States from the online poker scene, Canada has entrenched itself in the top spot in the PocketFives Country Poker Rankings, which are determined by adding the cumulative PLB scores of the top 20 players in each country.
With a PLB score of 98,814, Canada sits comfortably ahead of the United Kingdom, which has a score of 94,676. Leading the charge for the Great White North is Lucas bananazooChiciak, who has a current Sliding PLBscore of 6,709.90, good for fourth on the worldwide Sliding PLB. Ontario’s Griffin Flush_Entity Benger (pictured) is sixth worldwide with a Sliding PLB score of 6,608.72.
When looking at the Worldwide Poker Rankings, which also take a person’s Pro Poll ranking and their previous week’s ranking into account, Chiciak drops slightly to fifth place, while Benger jumps up to second.
