Norwegian Poker Championships Comes To The UK

03.31.2008 | 7:09 am | Poker

As the future of Poker in Norway is still shrouded in mystery, organisers of the official Norwegian Poker Championships have take the rather unusual step of moving the event to Nottingham in the UK. The tournament will take place between 28th April and 5th May 2008 and even after the move overseas the event organisers are still expecting upwards of 500 players to travel to the UK. So what does this mean for the future of Norwegian Poker?

As we have covered before on this Blog, the Norwegian authorities recently began a major clamp down on the game and have effectively deemed it to be illegal. They gate crashed a number of events, they have arrested a number of people and basically the sport seems to be dead in the country. This was all after the authorities began to grow concerned that the industry was becoming too strong with Annette Obrestad’s win at the World Series of Poker Europe 2007 event attracting record numbers of Norwegians to the game.

Many countries are using the US style of closing down the Poker industry as a mean to dictate the future direction of the sector with many of the opinion that once a suitable tax charging arrangement is agreed then Poker will resume in the Norway. Until the parties are able to come together it seems that police raids and headlines about illegal Poker dens are set to hit the front pages of the local press for some time to come.

While horse racing and many other forms of gambling are still legal in countries such as Norway it seems that Poker has been singled out for special treatment by many countries around the world. This is a reflection of the growing stature and power of the game, a game which has swept around the world on the back on the internet revolution. However, the harder the authorities try to stop people playing the game, the more popular it seems to become!