By Kevin Felix | February 7, 2008

The world’s second government-owned national poker site went into action today in Austria, a sign of the rising popularity and acceptance of online gaming. This is an exciting move forward in the online gaming world, especially for online poker players.

The move to create a national online gaming site in Austria was done with the cooperation of Svenska Spel using the Boss Media technology software.Earlier today the site saw its first citizens beginning to register, and unlike the Swedish national site which cannot offer freerolls, the Casinos Austria and Austrian Lotteries operated site have no such restrictions.

As part of the grand opening, win2day.at will be offering four consecutive €5,000 daily freeroll as well as an added €10,000 freeroll on Sunday. Such generous freerolls will surely help to garner interest in the new site. Win2day.at will also be offering a grand total of €50,000 in freerolls throughout the month of February.

The new site will be linking into Casinos Austria’s more conventional offline business by running satellites connecting players to the Casinos Austria Poker Tour (CAPT). This tournament consists of six live tournaments which run from February 24th to October 12th with a total prize pool exceeding €5 million.

Since win2day.at is a nationally owned site they obviously have to make concerted efforts towards responsible gaming. Win2day.at has placed an €800 per week deposit limit on all citizens aside from its own freerolls, making it so that players cannot join up and dominate the field with large pots that they can play aggressively with. The site offers no other bonuses save for the freerolls. In terms of rake structure, Austria will be following the Swedish precedent of 2.5%.

A nice feature on the site is that they will be offering a range of guides and videos to help newcomers accustom themselves with the service. These tutorials will cover everything from starting on the site and initial deposits, as well as offering videos with gaming advice.

Michael Hallen, CEO of Boss Media, was quoted earlier by Gaming Intelligence Group saying,
We are very proud that Austria will launch their poker site today using Boss Media’s software and there is a great sense of expectation. We have been given a big responsibility and everyone at Boss Media has been working hard alongside our colleagues at Win2day and Svenska Spel to make this launch successful, as successful as the launch of Svenska Spel two years ago.

Taking into the account the lessons which Austria has already learned from Sweden, along with their added ability to offer promotions, the site is expected in industry circles to perform even better than Svenska Spel’s poker offering did at the time of its launch.
 

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