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How to play Hellapenos
On Friday, a Department of Justice attorney told a federal judge that the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians knew the Interior Department could reverse an earlier determination that its Vallejo land was eligible for gaming.
Despite those warnings, the tribe opened its “Preview Casino” on July 24, offering Class II gaming out of modular structures.
Six days later, Interior determined that the land did not qualify for gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), forcing the tribe to shutter the operation and take the federal government back to court.
How to play Hellapenos
Dutch MPs have raised similar concerns before. In December 2025, CDA MP Straatman asked the state secretary whether websites advertising as “Beste casino’s zonder Cruks” should be taken offline immediately.
In a written response published in January 2026, Arno Rutte, the state secretary at the time acknowledged that enforcement against such sites remained limited, particularly for domains not registered under the .nl extension.
According to KVA, KT van Bruggen, the current state secretary for Justice and Security, has pointed out the urgency of implementing effective countermeasures to limit access to such illegal platforms.
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The triumvirate of Netherlands, Germany and Sweden is often held up as an example of how not to regulate, with all three countries haemorrhaging players to waiting illegal operators. So what is public sentiment like towards operators? “My feeling is that if you look at public sentiment, they don’t see really the difference between online and land-based,” says Petra. “If you look into what they’re saying, they’re primarily talking online. But for the general public, there is no difference [between the channels] in that respect.”
She believes the sentiment towards gambling among the Dutch public is comparable to the UK, Finland, Germany, France. “So, very tense,” she says.
However the sentiment towards the Holland Casino brand has remained quite positive, while more generally the sentiment towards gambling is very critical.
