Government's move to sanction online betting a response to illegal websites siphoning off more and more of the country's gaming income
In 1539, the beefy, bearded King Francois I legalised gambling in France for the first time, authorising one Jean Laurent to set up a lottery in exchange for the sum of £2000.
For the next 471 years, the state kept a steely grip on gambling - and the levies on
it.
Generations of people have grown up in the cheesy culture of the Francaise des Jeux (FdJ) and the Pari-Mutuel Urbain (PMU), the monopolies that run the lottery, scratch-card and horse betting business from cafes, racetracks and betting shops.
But this cosy arrangement seems doomed in a tougher, harsher age.
Caught between pressure from the European Commission and from illegal websites that siphoned off more and more of its gambling income, France has reluctantly opened up its online gambling market.
The tightly regulated change is little more than two months old, but already seems to be reshaping the social landscape.
A €14 million ($23 million) blizzard of TV, posters and newspaper advertising is portraying online betting as fun and sociable while poker - previously deemed seedy or the preserve of poseurs - is being promoted as manly and mainstream.
The price of this push for respectability could be dire, say some.
One outcome will be a flood of people who lose homes, jobs, friends and families to gaming addiction, predicts Jean-Luc Venisse, a psychiatrist who works for the Referral Centre for Excessive Gambling (CRJE).
"The anonymity, immediate access and comfort that go with online gambling will cause much greater dependency, especially among young men," he said.
France is estimated to have 30 million regular or occasional gamblers, of whom, according to a figure that the CRJE said was only an approximation, 600,000 can be considered as addicted.
Despite the CRJE's worries, the online market is set for the stratosphere, say experts.
By the end of June, the first month of liberalisation, 1.2 million people had registered with online bookies and staked €83 million in bets, most of them on soccer's World Cup.
In 2009, online betting was worth €2.3 billion to €3.1 billion, of which only €700 million was legal, according to a study by a consultancy firm, Precepta. It estimates the market could be worth €4 billion to €6 billion by 2013.
Francis Merlin, a specialist in online gaming, says poker alone could see a turnover in France of €300 million this year, rising to €500 million in 2011.
Unlike Britain, which has thrown open its online market with almost no restrictions, France is imposing tough terms on those joining the FdJ and PMU in internet gambling.
The Authority to Regulate Online Gaming (Arjel) has so far granted five-year licences to 26 French and foreign operators, permitting them to offer betting on a range of 28 sports, French and foreign horseracing and online poker.
Online roulette, blackjack and bingo are barred and "spread betting" (betting on the outcome of a sports event without knowing the amount one is likely to lose) is outlawed.
The state's monopoly on physical outlets is unchallenged, and there is no competition for the 197 local casinos.
Operators must set up an office in France and pay a chunk of their revenue into funds for the development of sport, the preservation of national monuments and help for addicted gamblers.
In addition, they must collect a tax of 7.5 per cent on sports and horse-racing bets, and 2 per cent on online poker - the highest in Europe.
Tim Phillips of Betfair.com said the liberalisation was unlikely to stamp out unauthorised sites, whose costs were around 40 per cent lower and offered better odds as well as gambling in games that remained outlawed in France.
"There will always be a black market and I think we have to be pragmatic about this. The successful regulation will be the one that catches as much of the black market as possible," said Phillips.
"But our view of the French regime is that it doesn't catch half of the online gambling activity."
Another question is whether France - or indeed any nation in the borderless world of the internet - can police online betting properly.
"Several thousand" illegal sites touted their services in France before the liberalisation, according to Arjel's president, Jean-Francois Vilotte.
So far, about 20 sites have been closed down by their operators in response to warnings by Arjel.
But these are early days, and a test case is already underway.
The Superior Court of Paris has given France's eight internet service providers until October 9 to block access from France to a bookie, stanjames.com, which is registered in Gibraltar and whose website is hosted by a company in Britain.
Failure to comply means an ISP faces a fine of €10,000 a day for a month.
But filtering out a site by an ISP often leads to innocent sites being screened out and in any case is easily sidestepped, say experts.
Filtering "is always difficult", complained the head of the French Telecoms Federation, Yves Le Mouel.
"You should start by approaching the owner of the site to get him to close it down, but you have to intervene with the site's host in particular," he said.
The European Commission is under pressure to propose laws that would protect gamblers and prise open monopolies across the European Union.
