After years of waiting, the poker enthusiasts from Spain and France can now enjoy each others company at the online tables again. PokerStars has launched its French-Spanish poker site with combined player pools.

Officials from both countries had been announced in early January that the games with shared liquidity can kick off in the near future. PokerStars was the first operator to get the licenses from both the Spanish and French operators, so they were a safe bet for the first to offer the games.

Even though many people were expecting it to take a long time – because of the slow process in the past – the games are already running. Although the original plan was to share liquidity between 4 countries, Italy and Portugal still need to do a lot in order to get into the mix. This probably won’t happen in the near future, mainly because of the stubbornness of the regulators and the speed of the administration.

However, some good news has seen the daylight just recently, as Italy has opened up the process for accepting online gaming licences. But even without the Portuguese and Italian players, the shared market between Spain and France is already the third biggest on the market, with its approximately 1,900 players on average.

PokerStars has announced a brand new tournament series for the French-Spanish players. The French Espana Hold’em Series(FRESH) will run between January 28th and February 11th with €5 million in guaranteed prizes. The series will include a €1 million GTD Main Event as well as the €300,000 GTD "Hercules" event with a buy-in of only €20.

The site is very optimistic about the opening of their bilateral tables, as Guy Templer of The Stars Group said: "This will be great for players and great for the poker category. "Having a strong, competitive regulated offering — which comes from combining player pools — has proven to be attractive to consumers who might otherwise be choosing to play on unlicensed and potentially unsafe sites."

Positive news about the online poker market is always welcomed here and we can only hope that this step is just the first on the way to a globally legalized, shared poker market, where we can battle against people from all around the world.

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