Norway Considering Banning Online Poker

Norway has already gone after the online slots industry, but now it looks as though they may be setting their sites on online poker as well. Their Culture Minister, Tronde Giske, is considering banning online poker in a move many expected after he went after online slots.

Giske is looking at the US’s UIGEA to see if this might be the way they want to go with the online poker ban, as he truly feels that online slots and gambling are nothing more than a way for addicts to feed their habits. Last year he went after the slots hard and tried to have them banned. He was not successful in a complete ban.

However, he did get that all slots in Norway are now government run and less “aggressive” than the other slots were, which is a huge deal for their government. It is not known if he will be treating online poker the same way he treated slots.

Online gambling is already considered illegal, and they could start enforcing that by banning the financial transactions just like the US did. However, they will be facing opposition from the other members of the European Commission, even though they are not a full member of the European Union. If he bans financial transactions, he will be able to stop online slots as well as online poker, something that will make him very happy indeed.





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