The statute
Article 1 contains two prohibitions, not one
Dutch comparison pages quote article 1, first paragraph, sub a of the Wet op de kansspelen and then reassure the reader that players are safe. Sub c of the same paragraph is 34 words long, addresses the player directly, and carries a fine of the third category under article 36a. It is quoted here because leaving it out is the commonest mistake in this market.
| Casino | Coins listed | Ceiling on the way out | Amount that triggers documents | Licence | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vavepays for this link | 90 | from 50,000 USDT split into instalments clause 8.8 | case by case | Curaçao Gaming Authority | Go to site |
| Bitcasino.io | not read | 1,000,000 USDT a week clause 6.10 | 2,500 EUR | Curaçao Gaming Authority | Details |
| Empire.io | not read | not published | 2,000 USDT | Anjouan Gaming Board licence bars NL | Details |
| Bitsler | not read | not published | case by case | Curaçao Gaming Authority | Details |
| Cloudbet | 40 | not published | case by case | Curaçao Gaming Authority | Details |
| CoinCasino | not read | 500,000 EUR a month clause 9.6 | case by case | Anjouan Gaming Board licence bars NL | Details |
| Rakebit | 15 | not published | case by case | Anjouan Gaming Board licence bars NL | Details |
| Primedice | not read | not published | case by case | Government of Curaçao | Details |
| Stake | not read | not published | case by case | Curaçao Gaming Authority | Details |
| BetPlays | not read | 5,000 EUR a week clause 6.11 | case by case | not published | Details |
The sentence every Dutch page quotes
Article 1, first paragraph, sub a of the Wet op de kansspelen forbids giving an opportunity to compete for prizes where the winners are decided by chance, unless a permit has been granted under that act.
That prohibition is addressed to the operator, and it is why none of the ten operators compared on this site may lawfully aim its service at a Dutch player. Article 36 makes an intentional breach of sub a a criminal offence and an economic offence; article 35a lets the board of the Kansspelautoriteit impose an administrative fine of up to the sixth category, or ten percent of turnover where that is larger.
So far, so familiar. Every Dutch page on this subject carries some version of the paragraph above.
The sentence they leave out
Sub c of the same paragraph forbids something else: gebruik te maken van een onder a bedoelde gelegenheid, wetende dat voor het geven daarvan geen vergunning ingevolge deze wet is verleend.
Using such an opportunity, knowing that no permit was granted for it.
The addressee has changed. Sub a speaks to whoever offers the game; sub c speaks to whoever plays it. Article 36a, first paragraph puts a penalty on the second one: a fine of the third category as defined in article 23, fourth paragraph of the Wetboek van Strafrecht. Since 1 January 2026 the third category stands at 11 000 euro. Article 36a, third paragraph classifies the conduct as an overtreding rather than a misdrijf, which is the lighter of the two grades in Dutch criminal law.
There is a second route to the same figure. Article 35b, second paragraph allows the board of the Kansspelautoriteit to impose an administrative fine of up to the third category for a breach of article 1 sub c.
What the word wetende is doing there
Sub c has a knowledge requirement written into it, and sub a has none. That difference is deliberate, and it is the reason the two prohibitions sit at such different penalty levels.
A person who plays at a site while unaware that it lacks a Dutch permit is in a different position from one who knows. What makes the distinction thin in practice is how easy the knowledge is to acquire: the Kansspelwijzer is public, searching it takes seconds, and a page that explains at length why a provider has no Dutch permit — a page such as this one — is itself the kind of thing that closes the gap.
This site states the statute and stops there. How prosecutors and the board have used these two provisions, how often, and against whom, is a question about enforcement practice rather than about the text, and nothing on this site has been checked against case files.
What the statute does not say
Three claims travel around this subject and none of them is in the act.
The act says nothing about a player being immune. The nearest thing to a protection is the knowledge requirement in sub c, and a requirement is not an immunity.
It says nothing about foreign providers being outside its reach as far as the player is concerned. Sub b, the prohibition on promoting unlicensed gambling, explicitly mentions opportunities given buiten het Rijk in Europa; sub c has no such geographic wording at all.
And it says nothing about the size of a stake, the size of a win, or a threshold below which the prohibition sleeps. Those thresholds exist in the tax statute, and even there they work differently from the way they are usually described.
Why a site funded by an advertiser prints this
There is a commercial link on this site and it points at one operator, so a page that quotes sub c is a page arguing against its own revenue. That is the point at which an editorial rule is either real or decorative.
The rule here is that a reader is entitled to the same statute the site read. A comparison table that lists coins, ceilings and verification clauses while omitting the one article addressed to the reader personally is a table designed to be agreeable rather than useful. If the omission is what makes such pages comfortable, the discomfort is the accurate part.
The practical reading
Three facts, and they are all checkable.
None of the ten operators here holds a Dutch permit, and the Kansspelwijzer settles that in seconds.
A win at any of them is taxed at 37,8 percent on a monthly net figure, filed by the player.
And a dispute with any of them is a dispute conducted under the rules of Curaçao or Anjouan, with a supervisor several time zones away — which is why this site reads the ceiling clause and the verification clause before anything else about an operator.