Ireland's €10 Stake Cap Could Kill Online Poker

A rule designed to prevent players from losing their wages on slot machines is now the biggest threat to online poker in Ireland. What does this rule entail, and why are players concerned? We’ll find out together right here in this article! Read the following lines carefully.

Snapshot

The rule wasn’t written with poker in mind

This is what you need to understand, above all else. The betting limits of €10 and the winning limit of €3,000 are already in place. Starting in 2024! With the Gambling Regulation Act 2024. And they apply to both slot machines and casino games such as roulette or blackjack.

For these games, it’s very easy to calculate your risk. If you bet €10, you can lose at most €10. That’s why setting a betting limit works best. You automatically limit the amount you can lose in a single round. You can make this calculation based on the budget you’ve set aside for a gaming session.

We believe this is a logical and well-thought-out approach. It’s easy to understand and clearly reduces risk.

Why poker breaks that logic completely

When you play poker, you’re not playing against the house, but against the other players. And there isn’t a single amount that represents your stake in the game. You might pay the tournament entry fee or the re-entry fee, if you’ve played before. Or maybe you’ll go all-in. These are all completely different actions, which means they have different risk profiles.

This limit wouldn’t just affect high-stakes players. At first glance, it might seem that way, but let’s think about the poker tournaments in your country. The Ireland online poker stake cap would mean all tournaments would have a limited buy-in, but also a much smaller prize pool. We don’t think you’d like that, would you? That’s why players are upset.

What the industry is actually saying

We’re not just talking about comments posted online or people who are overreacting. Even professional players consider this a problem.

Dara O’Kearney is one of Ireland’s best-known professional poker players. He said that the limits imposed on slot machines would be the final blow to poker in Ireland. We agree!

This is something that deserves to be taken seriously. We’re not just talking about some made-up argument. O’Kearney is a professional player who makes a living from poker. These rules could jeopardize his ability to continue working in Ireland.

So the discussion is no longer just about how much poker companies would be affected, but what happens to the people for whom poker is a source of income.

The real risk

Now comes the part that should matter the most if we’re thinking about player protection, not just the industry’s revenue.

You have several responsible gaming tools at your disposal, such as deposit limits or even self-exclusion, if you no longer want to play at all. A strict betting limit clearly works differently and, unfortunately, also comes with a high risk. If you want to continue playing for real money, you can choose to switch to unlicensed offshore casinos. Unfortunately, there you won’t benefit at all from the protective measures offered by GRAI. It’s not a good choice!

What we’re not going to tell you

We can’t tell you that poker will be exempt from this rule. All we can say is that the industry is lobbying hard for this. However, we don’t know what the outcome will be. The GRAI poker regulations are still being reviewed.

What we can tell you is that there’s a strong argument in favor of this exemption. A betting limit designed for a game where you play against the house isn’t suitable for a game between players which is what poker is. We’re talking about two completely different things. This change could pose a threat to players because they might move to offshore casinos, and as you well know, there’s no protection there!

The Bottom Line

We believe that a 10€ limit makes perfect sense for a slot machine game. However, for a poker table, it is completely inappropriate! This is the crux of the entire issue. The Ireland online poker stake cap is not about a regulator trying to destroy the industry. We’re simply talking about a universal rule, designed to apply to all games, but one that doesn’t fit poker.

It remains to be seen whether the GRAI will grant poker an exception to this rule. And this decision will tell us a lot. It will show us that Ireland’s new gambling regulatory regime knows how to distinguish between different types of games. We’ll be following this story and will let you know as soon as new information becomes available.

How We Verified This

We verified all the figures you see in this article directly on the PokerTube website. We did the same with their legal basis. For data regarding the consultation period, we used information from the Pokerfuse website. As you’ve seen, we’ve also presented the industry’s reactions, and for that we used people’s actual statements not interpretations or paraphrases.

If you feel right now that gambling has stopped being a fun activity for you, you should know that support is available. We recommend that you visit our page on responsible gambling tools. There, you’ll find the right resource based on where you live.

Keep in mind that we wrote this article for informational purposes only. The rules we discussed above are currently under review, so they may change at any time. It’s best to check directly with GRAI before making a decision.