No more Playtech Live Dealers for Canadians or Australians

If you live in Canada or Australia and have in the past enjoyed spending time on Playtech’s live dealer tables then you may have found the last month or so a little frustrating.

Late last year Playtech implemented a casino-wide policy to block access to Canadian and Australian players. If you missed the memo, you weren’t the only one.

Most Playtech casinos I played at (or more particularly their support staff) were none too aware of this policy change. The last month, on the advice of numerous casino tech support staffers, I’ve spent a lot of time clearing my cache, checking that my computer’s Java and Flash versions were up to date, uninstalling and re-installing casino software, cursing and blaming Microsoft for their last update to my machine and generally being quite grumpy. In all cases, only after escalation of the issue did the casino advise that the problem was a jurisdictional rather than technical one, and even then no confirmation was given on whether the policy was casino specific, or Playtech/casino-wide.

If you’re in the same boat, then:

1. don’t worry, your computer is working fine; BUT
2. do worry if you are particularly fond of Playtech’s live dealers (let’s face it, most of us are) because you can no longer play them.

This is a curious change. Not so much because it impacts all Playtech powered casinos, but more because it’s only in relation to live dealers. No problem playing any of their RNG games (aside from a complete lack of interest that is), and support were always keen to point this out.

“Please accept our apologies for the confusion, You are right, live games are unavailable in your jurisdiction.

Don’t forget to play our progressive jackpots and take home a massive win“

Perhaps Australians and Canadians were just too distracting for the dealers – what with all that witty repartee and smooth lines? I suspect this wasn’t the reason for the policy change. Nor would it have been due to changes in regulations, certainly not in Australia where the last change to laws pertaining to online casino gambling took place in 2001 with the passing of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001.

Irrespective of reasoning the die has been cast, for the time being anyway, so time to either:

1. pack your bags and move to a somewhere like the UK; or
2. find a workable proxy solution (wouldn’t advise this one); or
3. find a live casino accepting Australian players, or Canadian players respectively.