Finish newspaper ‘Helsingin Sanomat’ announced that a new government report is recommending that the current gambling laws be amended in order to allow poker players to retrieve previous online losses from the game.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health commissioned the paper and has made claims that the new law could and most likely would effectively give online poker companies little option but to block all Finnish players from participating in games on their sites. This move would of course have negative repercussions upon the poker industry in both Finland and upon companies from all across the world. Companies would in turn lose substantial amounts of profit, along with of course preventing Finish players from roaming the freedom that is enjoyed by the rest of the world when playing poker online. This surely cannot be a good thing for the morale of the game in Finland and may force many players out of the game entirely as there are a lot of players that rely solely on online poker games for income or leisure.

Losses would be recouped from one of the following; the online provider, credit-card Company, or player, and the legal amendment is designed to protect problem gamblers and children. This apparently the aim of the application of the legislation, the outcome of it is yet to be seen and many hold controversial views that apply to both sides of the argument.

There is no such law found anywhere else across the globe, and the Ministry appears to feel that many other countries will in turn follow suit and mimic the actions taken by the Finnish government. If this were to happen then the poker world could potentially be devastated, along with having an impact on all of the financial organizations involved in the process such as banks.

Helsingin Sanomat has said that Finns spend approximately EUR150 million on online poker every single year. It is also claimed that there are great levels of problem gamblers existing in the country (around 40,000) and that Finns are the fourth-biggest gamblers in the world in terms of how much they spend per head of the population. This is the main strength behind the supporters of the government reporting’s, this argument will most likely lead to the application of this particular legislation and could be seen to cause adverse effects on the game.