Buenas!!

Soy relativamente nuevo en Madrid (desde Enero 2020), y aun no estoy muy seguro de como puede ser popular el poker es Spain. Yo "vuelvo" a Espanya despues de 10 anyos viviendo en UK (de ahi la falta de enyes en mi teclado), basicamente toda mi vida adulta. Y puede que este malacostumbrado del poker britanico, pero me parece increible que un pais que tiene de salario medio unos 22k anuales, que las partidas de cash mas bajas sean de 1-3 (UK tiene un salario medio de unos 31k y las partidas empezaban en 1-1 de normal).
Actualmente no hay torneos por la crisis Covid, pero cuando los habia, tampoco eran para nada asequibles, con un rake increiblemente alto.
Me gustaria ver el interes que puede haber en la creacion de una sala de poker para niveles mas bajos y asequibles (cash games empezando en 0,50-0,50 y torneos entre 15-50 euros), y tambien si alguno sabeis algo de legislacion de juego en Espanya.

Un saludo,

J.

Hey J, I think you might want to look for a Spanish-focused forum. There are a few folks from Spain active in these forums, but not very many and the posting is all in English.

Hi Garick,

I appreciate the reply (super quick too!). I just wanted to leave something here as this is the biggest poker forum in the world, in case someone finds it.

It's so frustrating living in a place where the game it's so badly managed, it feels like poker rooms want to tilt you even before you set foot in the casino...

Anyways, I'll keep on trying to improve things here in Madrid, and will update here if anything starts happening.

Thanks again for reading (not sure if you understood anything tbh), and for the reply.

J.

The joys of Google Translate! It's not perfect, but I was able to get the gist.

Casinos seem to cater to the rich degens, and don't think of poker as any different in who it attracts, so the average salary in an area seems to have little to do with what stakes they offer. I played in Northern Macedonia once, back when it was still FYROM and its economy was crap. The smallest (only) game was still pretty big. Maybe 4/8NL, IIRC. Most of the other players seemed to be gangsters.

I used to gamble at Casino Gran Madrid in the 90's ; way before poker was a thing - people gambled hundreds of thousands of pesetas back then, the target customer for Casino gambling in Madrid has been upper middle class like for ever - the kind of venue you describe would not be profitable -

I used to love their chocolate and mint cake!

I see, so my (very) basic understanding of business does not seem to make any sense into what casinos would want.
astrobel, yeah, I get a place like that would not be hugely profitable, but I think it would do a great deal when it comes to grow the community, especially in a country that is not open to global online poker.
Having lived in the uk for a while, and it being a country with access to global online poker, the poker community there is huge. And I think it is due to the fact that poker is so accessible to everyone. I learned to play on pub poker nights, where the tournament would be a £5 rebuy structure, and we would get together around 30-40 twice or three times a week. Then at university, the school would promote having a poker society where we would get together for very low stakes tourneys or cash games.
I overall think Spain has the capacity for having a much better poker community, where the game does not represent degenerate gambling, but a strategy game that teaches an incredible amount of probability and game theory.
Regarding the profitability of growing the community through a place like the one I mention, I think companies like Winamax, etc, could jump in on making poker more readily available (like PartyPoker in Dusk till Dawn, or Pokerstars at Hippodrome, or 888 at Aspers in London).

I am still unsure if this is a rant thread or a call for action thread

But the fact that the best spanish players, French players, italian players, etc decided to move away from their countries to pursue and become the best in the world....kinda tells a very sad story.