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Poker.co.uk - Poker News Archive
Wednesday 22nd July 2009 Poker Exiled In Russia
Under Order 517, games of poker may now only take place in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea and 1,000 kilometres rom Moscow, the Primorsky region on the Pacific coast, the mountainous Altai region in Siberia or near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov, which is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics.
In Russia, the Ministry Of Sport, Tourism And Youth Policy has cancelled poker’s status as a sport meaning that players can now be prosecuted for engaging in games except those that take place in one of four remote zones.
“We have made a change in the Russian list of sports approved by the order of the Russian State Physical Training And Sport Committee on January 1, 2004,” said Vitaly Mutko, Minister Of Sport, Tourism And Youth Policy.
“We have stricken poker off the list.”
This move goes back to 2006 and legislation passed by then-President Vladimir Putin designed to stop the increasing rates of gambling addictions and weed out any criminal elements in the nation’s casino industry. His successor, Dmitry Medvedev, declared in early May that there would be no reprieve and the measures finally went into effect earlier this month.
However, the original ruling only outlawed casinos, bookmakers and slot parlours prompting many casinos to relaunch themselves as poker clubs. These argued that poker should be considered a sport, which prompted the Mayor for Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, to criticise such efforts at circumventing the law.
“When you sit at casino and you play poker or preference, it's a casino,” he told the Associated Press news agency in June.
”But, when you play poker at a poker club it's considered a sport?”
This loophole has now been firmly shut meaning that 70 accredited Russia Federation Of Sports poker clubs are facing closure while a huge army of players in the nation have been left wondering what to do next.
In addition, the future of the upcoming European Poker Tour event in Moscow is also in doubt. The new event was scheduled for August 17 to 23 at the Radisson SAS and was to feature World Series Of Poker main event finalists Ivan Demidov and Alex Kravchenko.
It is also not clear what actions the authorities will take towards home games of poker, both live and online, with many in the industry reacting angrily to this latest move claiming this it is just another step in Putin’s war on gambling.
Source: OnlineCasinoNews
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