The much anticipated launch of the Finnish state monopoly poker room has been delayed until at least October. Spokesman of the RAY gambling company said that the delay is due to new rules and laws regarding advertising online gambling, as well regarding laws that should enforce safe gambling. These new regulations include for an example a rule that prohibits people from transferring money to their online poker account between the hours 00:00 and 06:00 – thus trying to mainly keep the drunk and otherwise intoxicated people from blowing their whole savings playing online poker.

Naturally though it should be obvious that the Finnish poker pros who were licking their chops on hopes that a new breed of fish will come to this state monopoly poker room and donate their moneys hammered are not exactly happy about this rule.

Finland is not the first European country to launch a state monopoly poker room. Sweden did the same already several years back and still today the Swedish poker room gathers thousands of active real money online poker players on busy nights. It remains to be seen how popular the Finnish poker room will turn out to be.