Poker in France

France legalized the game of poker on certain sites, on the condition that only French tax payers would play on those sites and that the money that was put in the pot was taxed at a certain percentage. The tax, compounded with the high rake that poker sites charge for the organization of the game have made the game extremely hard to beat. The higher effective rake rate is combined with a reduction of the player pool, which renders for instance the choice of ring game less efficient. For this reason, and because to play poker at a high level one needs to train a sufficient number of hours (as for any other game), I have quit playing. I made of the order of a 1000 euros in total (after subtracting all initial investments). This is not a bad lump sum, but it is ridiculous compared to the number of hours invested. I would have liked to see whether the skills I acquired would have enabled me to increase my hourly wage to a reasonable amount, but in the present French poker climate, this is simply too tough a challenge. I am glad I got to live the pre-Arjel era in which it was clearly possible to systematically beat the game at least at micro and low limits texas holdem.

The Arjel law is ridiculous because of at least two reasons. The first is that not the profit but all money that one gambles with is taxed. The second reason is that it is tragic that the government of nations are slowly but surely dividing up the internet as they did the planet.