French and Spanish Players Now Combined on PokerStars

On Tuesday, January 16th, Europe’s long-awaited poker liquidity agreement began the first phase of its operation after PokerStars became the first licensed poker site to officially start sharing players from France and Spain. Following the news, Alex Dreyfus, a Frenchman and CEO of the GPL (Global Poker League) congratulated the Stars Group on the landmark development, and taking to twitter wrote:
“Congrats @PokerStars for being the 1st licensed online poker room sharing liquidity in France & Spain. I’m sure there was a lot of working behind the scene. Great step for the industry.”
The Stars Group COO Guy Templer also took the opportunity to laud the Spanish and French regulators for facilitating a significant improvement in the gaming experience of their players. He also thanked them for providing a safer more viable alternative than the unlicensed poker sites that they may otherwise have been tempted to play on, and elaborating further emphasized that only by having access to a bigger player pool is PokerStars able to offer a range of more attractive prizes, promotions and games for its customers.
For example, PokerStars is set to take advantage of the huge combined populations of France and Spain of more than 112 million people by kicking off the action in style with a €5 million guaranteed series called the France España Hold’em (FRESH) series which will take place from January 28 to February 11. In addition, French and Spanish players can now look forward to daily tournaments running with guarantees of up to €25k, as well as flagship Sunday tournaments with €75,000 and even €150,000 guarantees.
While France and Spain were the first two countries to agree the liquidity pact last summer, the situation is only set to improve further after Italy and Portugal eventually join the network later on this year. Anticipating a further boost in traffic, Guy Templer offered his company’s full support to the countries’ regulators, and urged them to resume their efforts toward shared liquidity, which he said has slowed considerably following an initial positive start.