Worldwide poker rooms for Irish players
The Irish are renowned poker players. However, they don't always find the classic poker sites to their advantage, so they turn to foreign sites. This is why unregulated online poker rooms (or non-GRAI) are still very attractive to the Irish.
Ireland, a good market for unregulated online poker
Irish unlicensed gambling sites offer a poker offering that looks very attractive to Irish players. The Gambling Observatory recently revealed that almost half of poker room enthusiasts in Ireland would use offshore sites. If these sites are so popular, it's certainly because they offer a large number of advantages.
Irish players breaking away from the GRAI seem for the most part convinced that the law's main mission is to collect tax on their backs and take away the fun and big winnings. More than a quarter of poker players have therefore exclusively adopted sites without an Irish licence to play poker. This game seems to attract Irish people much more to international sites than sports betting especially when we know that only 4.5%" of sports bettors would turn to foreign bookmakers.
Here are the sites that offer REAL international poker:
N°1
Innovative poker
| Min. deposit: 1 mBTC |
| No bonus |
| no rake on the site! |
Deposit and withdrawal in crypto only, site in English. Rake at 0 on the platform using its native token (CHP). The random drawing of cards is guaranteed by an external process on the blockchain.
Why is the Irish unlicensed offer so attractive?
The main reason that attracts Irish players to the foreign offer is its attractiveness. Foreign casinos being low taxed manage to optimise their offer and make it as attractive as possible. They often offer bonuses and promotions to motivate their customers. Your loyalty is rewarded, for example, with relatively attractive rakeback. Irish sites don't always have the opportunity to do this because of the weight of taxes imposed on them by their regulatory authority.
In addition, Irish law is very restrictive when it comes to poker games In the online poker rooms of foreign sites, players can enjoy a wide range of variants, just like what we see for games of chance not regulated by Irish law. Sites outside Ireland often offer a very rich catalogue for casino games, including some of the games that it is not possible to find at a 'legal' operator.
Another thing that can work against GRAI-licensed sites is that their tables can take a long time to fill up. This means that if you want to play, you really have to wait. On the other hand, sites outside Ireland do not have this difficulty and most of the time you will find opponents to play against. The desire to play against international poker professionals and build up their bankrolls leads many Irish players to register on gambling sites without an Irish licence.
What should Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland do?
The GRAI will certainly find it difficult to control Irish access to sites that it does not regulate. The reason is quite simple: with a VPN alone, players can hide their address and take part in online poker tournaments. One of the options open to the authority is to review its taxes to enable the operators it regulates to make their offers more attractive. In addition, it should authorise more variants of poker games on national territory. With this, players will have more reasons to seek their pleasure on Irish sites.
