In my last post, I talked about how thousands of Hungarians are picking up the game of online poker in an effort to beat the country’s 10% unemployment rate. Well I must have had great timing because news has just recently been released saying that Hungary is thinking about regulating poker. In regulating poker, Hungary will also technically be legalizing the game which will be a big relief to many players in the country.
The obvious reason for why Hungary wants to legalize poker and regulate it is because they want to make some tax revenue from the deal. If all goes according to plan, Hungary stands to raise around 1 million Euros in tax money right off the bat from this move. Unfortunately, the details to the plan have not been fully worked out yet so there is some work to be done before everything is official.
One problem is that certain people want to put big limitations on live club poker and this calls for a limit of 10 tables in each venue along with low level entry fees. I’m not exactly sure why Hungary wants to do this, but I just know many are concerned that this will drive all of the high profile players away from the country and keep others from wanting to play there.
The Hungarian Poker Association is particularly concerned because they think the goal should be to try and attract more high profile players to the country. The organization believes that strict regulations will force most residents to continue their poker days online. I think it’s unfortunate that Hungary wants to do it this way to and the plan really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me in the end.