After online gambling has been partly legalized in Italy, Italians have started to play quickly on the licensed and legal poker sites. Only few days after online poker appeared in the country, Microgame and Gioco Digitale released figures showing that poker is growing in popularity a lot. Microgame and Gioco Digitale are two operators, who contrived to attach the SOGEI database to their real money table systems.

The Finance Ministry of Italy had foretold that online skill games including poker would cost 400 million Euros all in all for the first year, with 3% going straight into Department of Treasury of Italy. According to Gambling Compliance reports, the first experimental weekend (from 5 to 7 September), when Italians were allowed to play only 3 hours a day (in the afternoon from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.), showed some extraordinary figures.

Microgame, with several white label sites for small operators, had 870 games wherein 1500 players participated. Gioco Digitale hosted the first online Texas Holdem poker game on September 2, had more than 1,200 tournaments wherein over five thousand registered consumers, many of which recently signed up, participated.

The federal government stipulated that the price of participation in the tourneys should be between 0.50 Euros and 100 Euros, with as a minimum 80% of the pot to be paid off as winnings, in this case operators have a max rake of 17%.

After operators have been allowed by the gaming authority to extend playing hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, it turns out that gambling activities on the sites have intensified. The first day of these extended hours was 9 September, on this day had 6000 registered users played or made deposits on Gioco Digitale, proving that the assertions made by Gioco Digitale president, Carlo Gualandri that half a million of Italians will be gambling poker online in the following 12 months may be right.

The company conducted the research that showed that a lot of new gamblers are being attracted to the sites by the poker coverage on night TV featured on Italian channels, for example Sky Italia. On the other hand, the research pointed out also that 70% of the registered users were already playing on overseas sites, in spite of the blocking of "unlicensed" websites ordered by the state authorities.

The first days’ operations success will encourage those who worried that there could be scanty liquidity till Italian gamblers were just free to mix with other countries’ players.
AAMS had also stipulated that in the first online poker regulation phase there wouldn’t be any cash games and Italian players wouldn’t be free to participate in tournaments that are organized by operators on world’s level.

Though, it’s expected that these rules will be mitigated after the new system has time to be established and high-profile global operators with licenses, for instance Party Gaming, Gala Coral Eurobet, 888, and Ladbrokes, have finished their software integration to let them operate within the SOGEI system technical restraints. In addition gamblers will be able to gamble 24 hours a day in a little while according to source inside AAMS.

Best casino online