News From France

Home Games and the Law

Loic Sabbate summed it right in his Card Player column two months ago: Poker is booming in France. The broadcasting of poker shows such as the WPT and the EPT on national television brought tons of newcomers to the game, craving action. As a result, dozens and dozens of communities of amateurs have appeared all around the country in the last two years, with the Internet playing a great role in gathering players via forums. Most of these new players just want to learn the game and improve their play in a friendly atmosphere, and playing in small-stakes games and freezeout tournaments is perfect for that. For a while, this was a sweet situation: Nothing was easier than finding a nice €10 or €20 freezeout tournament, provided you could do some searching on the Web. Despite the game's popularity, playing poker remains illegal in France, with the exception of a few cardrooms in Paris. (Casinos aren't allowed to host games, either.) Poker is still considered by the authorities as a game of pure luck, which means that playing it for money is out of the question.The first call was heard nine months ago when two amateur tournament directors running regular small buy-in tournaments were asked by the local police, gently but firmly, to cease their activities. Keep in mind that I'm talking about rake-free games, in which the operators weren't receiving any financial profit from their hard work. Eventually, the people behind these games decided to call it quits before they got into any trouble. It generated a lot of talk on the ClubPoker.net forums: Should we stop, as well, all of our lovely penny-ante live games and stick to Internet play? A solution was quickly found: The more we hide, the better it'll be. The motto was, "Let's just not bring too much attention on us." So today, home games are everywhere in France. Finding them is the hard part. We'll touch more on that subject in future columns, as rumors have recently been heard that casinos will finally be able to introduce poker into their mix of games. Hopefully, the situation will soon evolve in the right way.

Poker on TV: Le Tournoi des As

The first French televised poker production has finally been aired. Le Tournoi des As was conceived as a combination of the World Poker Tour and Celebrity Poker Showdown: Sit one or two poker professionals around a table, and let them face music, movie, and sports stars to see what will happen. For this first try ever on French TV, one would have to say it was pretty successful. Featuring talented pros like Jan Boubli, Surinder Sunar, and the Devilfish, and hosted by Bruno Fitoussi, the tournament was played as a shootout, with the winners of the six preliminary sixhanded tables gathering for the final. Surprisingly - or not - the six finalists were all experienced players, showing the unaware viewer that poker may be a game of skill after all. In the end, Michel Abecassis took down the tournament - and the PartyPoker cruise package that came along with it - after a grueling battle against the likes of Adam Lounis, Surinder Sunar, and chess master Almira Skripchenko. We can only hope that this show was the first of many to come.

See you next month for more froggy news.

Benjamin Gallen is a reporter for www.clubpoker.net.