PokerStars on FanDuel plans Alberta return as the province’s only poker pool stays ring-fenced

PokerStars on FanDuel told Alberta players on Oct. 23 that its desktop client and mobile apps are coming to the province, 10 days after PokerStars closed its international Alberta poker room. Unless Alberta is allowed to pool players with Ontario, the Flutter platform would open to players from one province only, the same split-market problem US online poker faces.

• PokerStars on FanDuel's Oct. 23 notice to Alberta players gave no launch date, and old PokerStars accounts will not carry over to the new platform.
• 888poker opened a ring-fenced, Alberta-only poker room on Oct. 13 and is the only regulated poker site in the province.
• Alberta's regulated market had 50 licensed websites run by 29 companies after the Oct. 13 deadline, up from 22 sites at the July 13 opening.
• The Supreme Court of Canada heard almost three hours of argument on international shared liquidity on Oct. 7 and reserved its decision.

Ten days after PokerStars shut its international poker room to Alberta, the brand says it is coming back. PokerStars on FanDuel told Alberta players on Oct. 23 that its poker desktop client and mobile apps are on the way to the province, PokerFuse reported. The notice carried no launch date and no other details.

Existing PokerStars accounts will not transfer. Players must open a FanDuel account, which they can already do through FanDuel’s casino site. Ontario players went through the same reset when the regulated version arrived there.

PokerStars’ Oct. 13 Alberta exit left no poker timeline

The return notice follows a clean break. Before the Oct. 13 exit, PokerStars emailed Alberta customers that poker would close to accounts registered in the province, with blocks applied by both IP address and registration details, according to PokerTube. Balances stayed available for withdrawal. Entries to tournaments starting Oct. 13 or later were refunded, and non-promotional rewards were paid out as cash.

Poker was the last PokerStars product to go. The brand had already pulled its sports betting and casino products from Alberta on July 13, the day the regulated market opened, and its October exit notice said nothing about when, or whether, a regulated Alberta poker product would follow, PokerFuse reported at the time. The Oct. 23 message answers the whether. It does not answer the when.

888poker runs Alberta’s only regulated room, for Albertans alone

For now, Alberta poker means 888. The operator shut off Alberta access to its international site and opened a ring-fenced Alberta room on Tuesday, Oct. 13. An 888 spokesperson told Poker Industry Pro that the new pool covers Alberta only and does not include Ontario. With that launch, 888 has been the first to bring regulated online poker to two Canadian provinces, after going first in Ontario in 2022, according to PokerNews.

Not every poker operator sees a single-province pool as viable. GGPoker registered with Alberta’s regulator, but PokerFuse reported in August that it was unlikely to launch regulated poker in the province without access to Ontario or international player pools. If PokerStars on FanDuel launches before anything changes on liquidity, it would join 888 in serving players from one province only.

The wider Alberta market is filling up quickly. After the Oct. 13 deadline, the province had 50 licensed websites run by 29 companies, up from 22 sites at the July 13 opening, Yogonet reported. That deadline was the end of a transition window: guidance posted March 17 said the AGLC could give operators a grace period of up to three months, to Oct. 13, on a case-by-case basis. The province takes a 20% cut of net revenue earned by sanctioned platforms, paid into its General Revenue Fund. Any operator still taking Alberta customers without that sanction risks a permanent AGLC finding that it is unsuitable for registration.

Flutter’s poker platform already pools Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania

The product heading to Alberta is the same Flutter poker platform that runs the shared Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania player pool, along with its Ontario counterpart. PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel launched in the three US states on April 1, the day after the old US PokerStars platform closed on March 31, SBC Americas reported. That switch added Pennsylvania to the pool PokerStars had already shared between Michigan and New Jersey.

In Alberta, FanDuel’s casino and sportsbook came first. Flutter’s FanDuel launched its casino and sportsbook in the province for players aged 18 and over on July 13. General manager Dale Hooper called Alberta “an exciting new chapter for FanDuel Canada,” but the release did not mention poker. A pre-launch release dated July 8 had made the July 13 start subject to regulatory approval and let Albertans aged 18 and over create FanDuel accounts at FanDuel.ca ahead of time. That existing account base is where Alberta poker players will now have to start.

For US readers, the bind is familiar. Small, separate state markets still define American online poker, and Pennsylvania players joined the Michigan and New Jersey pool only this April. Alberta’s poker rooms face the same arithmetic until the province can pool across its borders.

Supreme Court file 42141 will settle Ontario’s international pooling

Alberta has taken a side. The province intervened in support of Ontario at the Oct. 7 Supreme Court of Canada hearing on international shared liquidity. The Alberta iGaming Corporation told Poker Industry PRO that it is “actively looking at shared liquidity pools within Canada.”

The case is listed as file 42141, Atlantic Lottery Corporation et al. v. Attorney General of Ontario, an as-of-right civil appeal from Ontario. The appellants are Atlantic Lottery Corporation, British Columbia Lottery Corporation with Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation, and Loto-Québec, with Ontario’s attorney general as respondent, according to the court. They are challenging a November 2025 opinion in which the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled 4–1 that Ontario players could legally play against people outside Canada, as long as the province kept conduct and management of the games.

The justices heard almost three hours of argument and reserved their decision. No ruling came at the hearing, and the Supreme Court has not announced when it will rule. In the meantime, AiGC chief executive Dan Keene expects another 10 to 15 sites to launch in Alberta before the end of 2026.

📷 Alberta Legislature Building: Chris Woodrich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons