Ministry plans to introduce guarantees against Internet gambling losses

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The gambling pastimes of Finnish online poker addicts may become seriously complicated if the authorities’ latest plans materialise. Helsingin Sanomat has received information, according to which the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is planning to introduce an amendment to the law on gambling that would enable Internet gamblers to claim back their losses.
      The payer would be either the firm providing the online poker services, a credit card company, or the winning player in the game.
      According to the Ministry, in practice this would mean that the foreign companies running the Internet poker services would in all probability prevent Finnish players from ever taking part in the game. A player protected by such a law would be altogether too great a risk to the game organiser.
      Poker’s time-honoured tradition insists that all players pay up when they lose.
     
The idea of an amendment to the law on gambling is presented in a University of Joensuu report made public today. The Ministry commissioned the university to look into ways of protecting gambling addicts and children from the dangers of online gambling.
      The idea was conceived by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health civil servants together with the compiler of the report, the University of Joensuu professor of Law and Economics Kalle Määttä.
      According to Määttä, such a law does not yet exist anywhere in the world.
      The idea of the law is not to force citizens to put shackles on their gambling, but merely to provide them with the opportunity to claim back the losses that they may have augmented, say, while playing online poker when drunk.
      The report does not specify exactly how such legislation would be enforced. The Ministry is aware, for example, of the technical difficulties such a law would involve, and is therefore waiting to hear comments on the idea. The Ministry suspects that in time other countries will follow suit and start drawing up similar laws.
     
The online poker operation is based on the same kind of pyramid system used in network sales businesses. According to the social authorities, on the lowest levels of the pyramid are the gambling addicts, whose money the game organiser milks to pay the winners at the top of the pyramid.
      The professor involved in the project also takes the weaker players’ side.
      "If the damage caused to those at the bottom of the pyramid far exceed the benefits reaped by random players, something needs to be done", Kalle Määttä says.
     
Finns are quite eager players at online poker-tables; around EUR 150 million a year is thought to be taken by online poker firms from Finns alone.
      Measured against head of population, the Finns are fourth in the world tables of spending on gambling.
      Not everyone is able to keep it real or within reason: there are said to be around 40,000 people in the country with problems arising out of a gambling habit, or as many as in The Netherlands, a country with three times the population.
      Online poker games are not arranged by Veikkaus, RAY, or Fintoto, who organise gambling within Finland, but there is no restriction on people playing on the net, using a credit card to provide the necessary funding to buy chips.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Call for higher age limits for gambling (13.8.2007)

Links:
  Ministry of Social Affairs and Health
  Problem Gambling in Finland

Helsingin Sanomat