Update: Italian Market Opens Up

Legal casino and poker cash games introduced It has been reported on July 18 that the Italian online gaming market has opened up with the introduction of legal casino and poker cash games from AAMS-certified operators. Supposedly, a gradual launch of cash games is currently taking place, and it will envisage a game window of three hours on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday's window from 08h00 to 20h00 and an unlimited window from Friday. One of the operators that launched cash games, the Ongame Network, enabled bwin and GDpoker (Gioco Digitale) to offer cash game poker to Italian players. According to Ongame Network Managing Director, David Pittel, “We are proud to be among the first operators to launch cash game poker on the Italian market. Cash games are not only highly popular, cash games are also well-suited to the mobile platform which requires that the user has control when he starts and ends playing. We are also now working to implement cash games for a couple of our other B2C operators that we expect to launch shortly.” Another positive reaction came from Paolo Di Feo, Southern Regional Director at bwin.party: 'We are excited about the launch of cash game poker in Italy. Cash game poker requires less effort from the player and is particularly appealing if you just want to play for a limited period of time. We are delighted that Ongame is one of the first-movers into this exciting new segment of the Italian market.” It has been estimated that the new, online cash games-related amendments of the law will bring around 15 Billion a year in 2010-2013 in the Italian gaming market.