First legal poker club is about to open in Russia

The opening in St. Petersburg is scheduled on November, 1. At least one professionally organized tournament will be scheduled a week. There will be no prizes for the winners and no buy-ins. The club is cooperating with prosecutors organization and when it opens it becomes the first in the city (and, possibly, in the country) officially operating poker house.

Quoting the author of the idea:

“We invite you for the opening of The First Legal Poker Club in St. Petersburg. We play money-free professional tournament Texas Hold’em. We don’t have buy-ins and rebuys. Everybody is in equal conditions.  We’re planning to open and hold the first tournament on November 1.

We’re planning to systematically have weekly sport poker tournament, where people with same interests will be able to play without taking any risk. After each tournament day we’ll keep records and write the results down to the tournament table.

The most recent info appears at the club’s official VK page, and there are 335 people in it already.

No sweets, no chocolate.

According to Russian law, there may not be any prize fund – even sweets can’t be used as a price. If violated, this will be considered as gambling (there were precedents), which is currently prohibited in Russia.

So, once again: no buy-ins, no prizes, just sport poker.

Goodwin Goplay Open, St. Petersburg, 2008

Some users have already offered a scheme where they make buy-ins through poker rooms clients or asmembers of poker club.

The registration procedure looks like following:

“There will be fee just for the event. The facility is closed in time of the tournament; there will be no other guests. No member fees. Everybody who’s willing to participate leaves his contacts. He gets notification a day before the tournament. When he arrives to the club, he signs for the club rules and gets a personal card”

Some of the professional players have shown interest to the opening of this club – Vitaliy Volov aka hiNt, for example:

“I’ll take part in it with pleasure. Have send my messenger’s number. Finally someone with a real sport event on poker! I’m so tired of this fucked up buy-in events!”

Opening of any poker club in the North capital (and in any other city) is very noticeable and important event. It’s very nice to gather poker enthusiast of St. Petersburg in one place. It creates an opportunity for something bigger.