I wasn’t paying close attention … but a glimpse of Twitter in the wee hours (morning time in Europe) revealed people waiting like they were watching the NBA lottery to see who would get the go ahead to serve up online poker in Spain.

I figured it was a done deal for PokerStars, the way all that spam those press releases started coming in a couple weeks ago from Estrellas Poker Tour.But apparently there was quite the scary period as the “first wave” got read — Codere, Cirsa, Jaxx, bet365 and Sportingbet — but now apparently all has returned to normal with PokerStars, the #1 online poker site in the world still, becoming more and more legit in places that don’t rely on weak or at least legally questionable laws (I’m looking at you, UIGEA) to facilitate a proper American-style shakedown.

Statement direct from PokerStarzistan below …

(My question: with PokerStars.es getting the license, is PokerStars.com still the largest poker site, or for the sake of accuracy should we start calling it “the world’s largest alliance of geographically restricted online poker sub-sites” or something like that? This kinda makes a difference for those of us still thinking about how online poker is gonna work in the US with that inter-vs-intra-state thing. But ultimately it’s all PokerStars.com, right? And so that dot-net thing you really was just a bunch bullshit-dot-us? OK, Just checkin’ … and congrats!)

Hi,

Please find below an official statement regarding PokerStars being granted a license to operate in Spain.

Thanks
PokerStars Press Office

PRESS STATEMENT

We are happy to confirm that PokerStars was today granted a license to operate in Spain and we plan to launch www.PokerStars.es on June 5th. For now, Spanish players can continue to compete on www.PokerStars.com as normal and don’t need to take any action.

As always, PokerStars is committed to providing players with a superior customer service, software and security. You can rest assured that your funds in this transition are totally safe and available. We will provide more details on the transition next week.

Attributable to PokerStars spokesman Eric Hollreiser

-ENDS-