As predicted in our look at the upcoming year in Canadian poker, Alberta is moving forward with a new system of iGaming that looks to bring the province out of the grey and into a regulated market system similar to Ontario. While the new legislation applies to all forms of online gaming and is largely directed at the massive new sportsbetting market that has evolved in Canada after the Ontario move, online poker players will feel the impacts of the new legislation as well.
In fact, players of peer-to-peer games like poker may well feel the biggest sting when the new system is finally in place, in large part because those players appear to be a bit of an afterthought in the process. With large revenues in casino play and sportsbetting going into the grey market, Alberta is looking to redirect that revenue internally for tax purposes, as well as regulation of problem gambling and security issues.
Much of the new iGaming system seems directed at those sorts of “house games”, where players bet against the house on random (or semi-random, as in sportsbetting) outcomes, with peer-to-peer games, where players bet against each other after paying a flat fee to the house, getting far less attention in the text of the new “Standards and Requirements” document that was released on Jan 14, 2026.
Good Intentions?
The basic impetus for the new system seems like a good one – capture tax revenue from a growing online gaming industry for use in Alberta to improve schools, healthcare, etc. Section 3 of the new guidelines outlines many of the social responsibilities expected of new operators under the system, showing that the point of the legislation is to ensure a safer environment for Albertans to play in, while at the same time generating revenue for use elsewhere in the province.
Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC), the regulatory body in Alberta tasked with overseeing all forms of gambling, uses a charitable model that brings local charities in for a cut of the casino pie, and those charities use the funds to provide services to the community. As directly stated on the AGLC “About gaming in Alberta” page, “Proceeds from gaming are invested back to our communities. Charitable organizations deliver their services with proceeds from paper bingo, casino table games, raffles and pull tickets.”
Full details on regulatory requirements for the new iGaming applicants are yet to come, as the process is still in the early stages. In an email exchange, Lynden McBeth, Senior Communications Officer, Policy & Public Affairs, said, “Interested operators were able to begin the application process with AGLC beginning on January 14”, so it’s likely that only initial inquiries have been made at this point in the process, with no confirmed applicants.
Citing privacy concerns, McBeth also indicated that “To maintain the integrity of applicants and uphold the dual-track process with the Alberta iGaming Corporation, AGLC will not disclose which operators have expressed interest in establishing an iGaming platform in the province”.
Capturing the Online Gaming Sphere
The main issue with AGLC’s charity model in the modern world is the massive growth in online gaming. While Alberta has had PlayAlberta.ca for more than 5 years, many Albertans choose grey-market offshore sites to gamble on, and that revenue is never captured by the AGLC charity model. The PlayAlberta software has never supported online poker, so poker players have been forced into the grey market just to play, while other online gamers choose the grey market due tio better sign-up and play-through bonuses.
The point of the new system is to bring that revenue into the system by forcing those operators to only serve Albertans through a locally developed system that serves Alberta, and only Alberta. As reported by Anuj Arora at pokerfuse, the new guidelines “include requirements related to game integrity, responsible gambling protections and anti-money laundering compliance”.
Canadian Gaming Business has a breakdown of the proposed revenue structures and requirements under the new system:
- Operators
- one-time $50,000 application fee
- $150,000 annual registration fee
- Platform/gaming Suppliers
- $15,000 annual registration fee
- Other Suppliers (payment, oddsmakers, etc)
- $3,000 per year
- Revenue Split Model
- 3% of total gross gaming revenues (GGR) is deducted immediately
- 2% for First Nations funding
- 1% for social responsibility programs
- 20% of the remaining GGR is taxed for general provincial revenue
- Effective tax rate: 22%
- 3% of total gross gaming revenues (GGR) is deducted immediately
Poker Players Facing Uncertain River
How this hand plays out for poker players is still very much up in the air. The process is still pre-flop, but our hand doesn’t look very strong.
While there is some attention paid to peer-to-peer games in the Standards document, specific details are directed at game integrity almost exclusively. While that’s a vital topic for poker players, covering things like security, bot detection, fraud protections, etc, one area that so far has less substance is liquidity.
That’s somewhat understandable. It’s easy to imagine this new system being created on the back of the massive growth in sportsbetting over recent years, not least in Ontario’s recently regulated environment, and that, along with casino games, will almost certainly fund the largest portion of the revenue generated.
But as poker players know, peer-to-peer games have unique requirements to be functionally useful, and a very big one is liquidity. In short, liquidity is the concept of how much money is in the game, and generally speaking, the more players, the better the liquidity, and the stronger the game as a whole is.
Offering Play Only to Albertans
One of the key requirements of the new system is that operators who apply will be required to shut down any grey market access to Alberta players before the application process, and then create software or filters that exclude non-Albertans from the clients. While that presents a minor inconvenience, with a bit more red tape and higher costs to casino and sports betting operators, for poker providers, it means a massive reduction of player liquidity in that region.
Alberta has pointed to Ontario with this move, and while there have been roadblocks and stumbles, the Ontario legislation has been largely successful from a provincial point of view, though players may have a different view. There is a big difference between Ontario and Alberta, however – 15 million versus 5 million.
Ontario has three times the population of Alberta, and rivals the size of the biggest segregated US markets. Alberta would be among the smallest segregated markets in North America, at just over 5 million people.
That makes it an open question as to whether the market is large enough to sustain. For players, it will mean much lower prize pools and smaller fields. It will also likely mean less ability for operators to compete on rake and bonus offers, and will include a heavier emphasis on responsible gaming, likely through GameSenseAB. For operators, it will mean significantly less revenue generated, along with higher costs, making such games potentially unviable.
Shared Liquidity
While liquidity is an issue for all gaming operations to some degree, it can become a life-and-death situation for games like poker. The limited player pool has a huge impact on poker revenue, potentially making the overhead of offering the game too high to be worth the expected return. With just 5 million people, and fewer of those of legal gambling age (18 in Alberta), the Alberta market is very much in that danger zone.
poker.pro’s CEO Jason Glatzer explains it perfectly. “Forcing operators to provide standalone services with no shared liquidity serves no purpose and would likely drive the region’s gambling offshore, evaporating the tax dollars gaming authorities hope to generate. Liquidity is vital for poker players if the game is to thrive. The focus, in my opinion, should instead be on responsible gaming, robust checks and balances for operators, keeping games safe, and assuring sustainable revenue streams. Poker is a game of passion, and in many countries and jurisdictions, a sport. I’d be thrilled to see it classified that way. My hope is that players in Alberta could wake up to a sunnier landscape with responsible regulation that permits international liquidity.”
Without some ability to expand the player pool beyond Alberta’s residents, games like poker will be a very hard sell under the new system. One option could be to partner with Canada’s other regulated commercial market, Ontario, for a combined player pool of more than 20 million people.
Another option is more of a hybrid model, one that captures rake revenue and applies social guidelines with Alberta-based players while continuing to allow them to compete against the full international field. However, neither of these options seems to be in the cards right now.
Hope on the Legal Horizon
While not directly applicable to Alberta yet, Ontario has been undergoing a legal process that recently saw the Ontario Supreme Court confirm “the legality under Canada’s Criminal Code of Ontario’s proposed “pooled liquidity” model (the proposed model) for Internet gaming in Ontario”. According to Osler, a leading Canadian business law firm, “The proposed model would permit players in Ontario’s regulated iGaming market to participate in peer-to-peer games (such as poker or fantasy sports) with players in jurisdictions outside of Canada, and to bet on the outcomes.”
As a ruling from another provincial court, it has no direct bearing on Alberta, but the ruling has been appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, and any ruling there applies to jurisdictions across the country, including Alberta. If the national court upholds the ruling, it will likely mean both Ontario and Alberta will be forced to allow international players. Oddly, the language of the ruling COULD mean that while both Albertans and Ontarians could compete in international pools, they could NOT compete against each other, but that seems like a detail that would be worked out in a final ruling for multiple Canadian iGaming markets.
There are still a lot of open questions about the process Alberta is undertaking, both in terms of specific technical and structural details, as well as more general timeline information. Most reports suggest implementation sometime in 2026, and with applications already open, that might be realistic.
With poker players’ hand preflop, things look pretty dim; as it stands, poker looks to suffer significantly if the new system goes into effect as is. There’s still the board to come, however, and Alberta poker players may just find that miracle legal ace on the river.
