Poker Kiev

Just about a year ago poker in the Ukraine was listed as a sport. Clubs are placed all over the country – in Lvov, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkassy and, certainly, Kiev.

History of the Ukrainian industry of gambling is very much similar to the one in Russia. The law which forbids gambling came in force in 2009. It actually made a lot of casinos and slots machine clubs working undercover.

5 years later we can’t say that the situation has changed significantly. Big and little gambling houses are being closed for several times a year. It is a common practice.

There are cities that symbolise a nation and Kyiv is one of them. Kyiv is the soul of Ukraine, playing a key part in the past, present and future of this country.One of the most beautiful cities in the world, Kyiv is covered in a sea of greenery, which can be seen everywhere - in its many parks, boulevards and gardens. A short day 3 took place at the €5,000 no-limit hold’em main event at the PokerStars European Poker Tour stop in Kiev, Ukraine. Just 68 players began the day and the money bubble burst when 40. Final table of EPT Kiev Season 6 (EPT Kiev Sports Poker Championship)Episode 3/3Players by seat:Vadim Markushevski (BLR)Lucasz Plichta (POL)Adrian Schaap (NL.

Ministry of defense of the Ukraine holds a massive operation of finding and closing undercover casinos all over the country. It is supposed that all the corrupted workers of the law-enforcement agencies will be fired and the operation will be followed by even more massive reconstruction in insight building of organizations. The casino in the hotel Prime Palace will be an efficiency indicator.

Is playing poker considered gambling?

Poker is officially legal in the Ukraine. For almost four years Federation of sport poker held judicial confrontations for the right of putting this card game into the list of sport games. A year ago that has happened.

Despite a clear borderline between poker and other gambling games, some poker clubs experience difficulties due to that. Workers of the ministry of defense have made raids on famous poker clubs – for example 'Khreschatyk' club in the center of Kiev. However, no rules infringements were found so clubs were regaining their activities.

Where you can play poker in the Ukraine

There are several of dozens of good poker clubs in the country. Most of them are, of course, in Kiev, there are plenty of them in Lvov, Kharkov, Drepropetrovsk. 'Khreschatyk', 'Imperial', 'Alabama' are the most famous amongst them and are situated in the capital of the country.

“The leading club in Kiev is certainly “Khreschatyk”, which is known to many pros not only in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan or Georgia but also in Italy and Iran” – says Ukrainian reg.

Ladies Bomond WSF Event in 'Khreschatyk'

Poker net “Alabama” includes four clubs, three of them are in Kievand the fourth, opened in the midst of October 2014 – inOdessa. The situation in this town is very special. One of the locals had written this before the club opening:

“There is not a single poker club due to problems connected to opening it in glorious town of Odessa, where were four or five decent clubs back in the days”.

Even in small towns game is oftentimes wide open to be held and there are no problems. Visiting clubs is also not connected with some sort of problems: there is much lesser intoxicated people and securities work in a proper way, there is good stuff and working personal. This situation becomes better all over the country and after some raids to illegal gambling houses poker clubs can breathe with ease.

Likewise in Belarus, Ukrainian clubs put more volume to cash games. Tournaments are held often as well (in big rooms – daily), but they are mostly held to get more people to play cash games. You can get to mini-series of tournaments with guaranteed pool prizes of 10,000 grivna (~ $900) per event. There are more solid examples. Let’s take Russian Poker Tour series for example, it is being held in Kiev(and earlier in Odessa).

Buy-in to the tournaments are mainly medium or low – not bigger that couple of hundreds of grivna (less than $50), although big tournaments are easy to find. There are mainly rebuy tournaments or turbos, more seldom are freezouts.

There is a lot of cash games of lower limits 1/2 grivna, 5/5, 5/10. These tables are available 24 hours a day. 25/50, 50/100, 100/200 are less frequent, but higher limits are easy to find as well.. The games of Hold’em, pot-limit Omaha and Chinese poker are played.

During different poker series stakes at cash tables can reach up to $50/100 in major clubs.

Poker in Crimea

Poker Match Kiev

After Krimean reunion with Russiapoker on the peninsular has to get a new house. According to Russian laws, gambling is legal only in specially separated gambling areas. And such an area is crated in this region – for now on paper only.

Yalta

Building of the gambling area starts in the beginning of 2015, and now economical preparations are being made. Objective decision on this matter will be made based on proposed projects.

The cost of the building is evaluated to 100 million – 1 billion dollars. The most probable placement of gambling area is Bolshaya Yalta.

Who plays Poker in the Ukraine?

The public in poker clubs is very heterogeneous – starting from students, young internet playes and going to old regulars. There are a lot of weak players.

“There was great income in quantity of people in 2009 when the law prohibiting gambling came in force. And they were mostly casino regulars who were deprived of their favorite gambling toys. All the grannies who were playing slot machines have become poker clubs regulars.

And not just grannies. With the development of online poker there is many good young players out there killing old casino guys and making up for their inexperience with great knowledge of poker math and probability theory,” – tells a regular from Kiev.

The level of the game depends on the stakes and, less, on the city. Kievhas become a new home for Russian regulars and players from other countries. But for now there is room for everybody.

At 1/2 there is less strong players and the bigger stakes the more experienced grinders there are. Tournaments are less predictable because of fast structure and big number of rebuys and addons.

Poker Kicker Definition

In general Ukraine is a great variant for different kinds of players. Strong and weak players perfectly co-exist here. And in the future situation is going to be only better.

The most successful tournament player in the Ukraine:

1. Eugene Kachalov – $8,269,269
2. Yevgeniy Timoshenko – $6,824,459
3. Alexey Kovalchuk – $2,285,955
4. Alexander Dovzhenko – $2,106,214
5. Sergei Baranov – $1,151,196
6. Alexey Khoroshenin– $1,085,179
7. Anton Makievski – $1,083,594
8. Andrei Danilyuk – $953,262
9. Igor Dubynski – $779,857
10. Vadim Shlez – $776,449.

Eugene Kachalov

Kachalov and Timoshenko mover to the USA when they were kids, so their lives are closely connected with western culture. Being top-notch poker players, these guys still speak Ukranian and continue to defend colors of the native country.

Alexey Kovalchuk is from the new generation of Ukrainian sportsmen and he has two WSOP bracelets (2011 and 2012), two IPT titles and victory on Russian Poker Tour. He is much less notable last couple of years.

Alexander Dovzhenko in his turn is the guru of Russian and Ukrainian poker. In the summer of 2009 he took second place in EPT Kiev but generally he prefers smaller tournaments. Starting from 2001 Dovzhenko has cashed in tournaments for 119 times!

Gambling in Ukraine is currently restricted by law by way of the Ukrainian parliament’s passing of “On Prohibition of Gambling Business in Ukraine” in 2009. (1) Any placing of bets in which the outcome is found to be determined by chance in whole or in part is considered gambling under the law, and is banned, except where permitted by law.

So what was done here is to specify which types of gambling are permitted, and aside from allowing things like lotteries and gambling for charity, it also set out “gambling zones” where gambling is allowed, which includes hotels rated at least 4 stars and with 100 rooms or more, certain entertainment and cultural complexes, and cruise ships.

So it’s not that gambling was prohibited in Ukraine, as the title of the law suggests, it’s more like it was regulated, and at least part of the rationale for this new regulation was the fire they had in a gambling hall immediately preceding the law in which 9 people lost their lives.

A lot of the unapproved gambling operators didn’t exactly go away quietly though and since then there have been hundreds of arrests resulting in gambling operators being shut down and their equipment seized. This is the target of this new law, to ensure that whatever gambling occurs in Ukraine meets with government approval and to look to shut down the gambling which does not.

The Crimea region was also deemed to be an approved gambling zone although this area is now under dispute as the Russians have effectively taken it over, and have established it as a gambling zone of their own. So this area isn’t really subject to Ukrainian law for all intents and purposes at present.

Playing Poker In Ukraine

When the law passed, people claimed that poker wasn’t gambling and therefore not subject to the new laws, since poker was considered a sport by the Ukrainian government, but the government quickly stepped in and removed poker being designated a sport so it would be instead viewed as gambling.

However, the poker industry in Ukraine didn’t take this lying down, and they disputed the government ruling, taking it all the way to the Ukrainian Supreme Court, who ended up ruling that poker was indeed a sport and therefore was distinct from the gambling with Ukrainian laws prohibit. (2)

So this resulted in a resurgence of poker clubs in Ukraine, who now offer dozens of places that players can play poker at, throughout the country, especially in the Kiev area which is a hotbed of poker and features the largest poker room in Eastern Europe (3).

In spite of the fact that some people have interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision to only deem tournament poker as a sport and not cash poker, both forms of poker are offered now in Ukraine, and cash poker here is even more popular and even more widely offered, even though there is plenty of tournament poker offered as well.

Online Gambling in Ukraine

The government claims that the new law applies equally to both land based and online gambling, and they have stated that online businesses offering gambling should be shut down alongside their land based counterparts. (4)

This presumably would mean that if a business set up an internet gambling site in Ukraine the government would seek to shut them down, although this really has little practical effect, since there are a lot of online sites that operate outside the country and therefore aren’t subject to Ukrainian law at all.

This did cause Ukrainian online gambling operators to move their servers outside the country to avoid the law, as the original law did provide this loophole, but it was closed in 2011 and any Ukrainian business found to be involved in online gambling is subject to being charged. (5)

In spite of poker now being declared a sport by the courts though, considering it to not consist of “gambling” in Ukraine, and therefore not illegal, there are no online poker sites in Ukraine, although players have no trouble playing at the large selection of online rooms located outside the country, and some even offer play in the Ukrainian language.

It remains to be seen if any Ukrainian operators will look to set up poker rooms within the country but keep in mind that the biggest reason why operators do this is to comply with regulation, meaning that they are told they have to do that by the government, and it’s simply easier to set up shop wherever it would make the most sense to based upon tax and other laws.

The Future Of Online Poker in Ukraine

So if Ukrainian businesses were looking to set up a poker room it would make more sense for them to run it from another location anyway, as they have been forced to do with their other gambling ventures, like sports betting and casino, which are not considered to be sports in Ukraine by anyone and would be illegal.

Given that poker sites offer other forms of gambling as well on their sites, and there is obviously money to be made off these other forms of betting even among poker players, it really wouldn’t make sense for them to set up in Ukraine regardless of what the law may be toward poker right now.

The bottom line though is that Ukrainians can play all the live poker they want right now at one of the poker clubs in the country, and they can also play as much online poker they want as well, at any poker site they wish, poker is considered a sport and therefore legal, and there are no regulations either causing the online poker sites they wish to play at to have to pay higher tax rates, and they are located in low tax rate areas, so this is an ideal situation right now.

In time, Ukrainian officials may look at regulating online poker and perhaps even online gambling in general, but this is not on the horizon right now, and that suits players just fine.

References:

(1) Gambling in Ukraine

(2) Online Poker Sites in Ukraine

(3) Poker in the Ukraine

(4) Ban On Gambling in Ukraine Applies to Internet Casinos As Well

(5) Online Gambling Law in Ukraine

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