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Poker.co.uk - Poker News Archive
Thursday 23rd July 2009 Poker Blacklisted in Russia
It has been a much championed viewpoint in the gaming press, and with those fighting to repeal gaming prohibition in the US, that poker is classified as a sport in Russia. Those seeking to distance poker from the pigeonhole marked ‘luck’ containing lotteries, casino games and bingo, have long lauded Russia’s approach, to poker at least, as the logical way to classify a game predominantly mastered through skill rather than chance.
Yet, this pioneering advocacy of the world’s newest sport was seemingly facilitated by mistake; an error on the part of the Russian authorities when updating its list of official sports in 2007. An unerringly convenient time to realise that one of your national sports should, in fact, go the way of prostitution and soon, Goth music, into the dark recesses of the illegal underworld.
The anti-gambling law, promoted by Vladimir Putin, came into force on July 1, much to the surprise and chagrin of many, who predicted that the economy would thwart the former president in his charge to outlaw gambling throughout the country, except in four designated, and so far, ill-equipped regions. No casinos are expected to open in the near future.
The Kremlin has taken a hard line on gambling since drafting regulations to isolate, if not deport its availability to four remote regions back in 2006, when Mr Putin made public his blueprint to stamp out “wasteful spending and improve the moral health of the nation”, as quoted by the Financial Times.
Estimates suggest that somewhere in the region of 350,000 people will be thrown into unemployment as a result of the prohibition at a time when the Russian economy and its unemployment levels, are catapulting towards worryingly opposite ends of the scale.
Gambling prohibition is nothing new in Russia; casinos and gambling parlours having been forbidden during the Soviet era. However, under Boris Yeltsin’s new Russian administration in the 1990s, gambling underwent something of a boom period leading Sergey Mironov, speaker of the upper house of parliament, to claim that the unregulated gaming industry had facilitated “money laundering, wrecked the work ethic and criminalised society.”
The Kremlin’s announcement has drawn the iron curtain on that period, and on the hopes of those looking to reclassify poker’s gaming status elsewhere. This technical prohibition (not strictly a blanket ban, but the truth is that none of the four regions are anywhere approaching ready, or suitable meaning that there currently isn’t a single legal casino in operation, with none expected anytime soon) fires another warning shot across the industry’s bows, if any more were needed, that the road ahead may still be wrought with danger.
Poker has been ousted from its pedestal in Earth’s biggest country and is scrambling to regain a foothold in its biggest single market, yet this news, though troubling, shouldn’t be maligned as prophecy.
Source: OnlineCasinoNews
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