Reports claim that Eastern European countries have a high market share and that Russia is the second largest poker market after Germany. Just by claiming that Russia is part of Eastern Europe is a false claim and also if you judge by the incomes and players spend, you also are able to find that Eastern Europe doesn’t have a high market share when it comes to playing poker.
Even if there is no difference between between the skills of an Eastern European player who has a minimum wage of 450 EUR per month and the Western European players who likely makes more than 2500 EUR per month, the true grinders come from a different category.
The Eastern European poker players that are spending big are usually the expats living in Budapest, Bucharest (make sure not to mix these two), Bratislava or Prague for certain cost reasons and representing the region in market share. You can call them a sort of online poker players/digital nomads. There are even sites that promote Budapest a possible Poker Refugee camp for poker players that wanted to play online poker after “Black Friday” hit their favorite skill game.
Texas Hold’em has seen its fair share of popular times and it has certainly impacted the less developed countries in Eastern Europe. This happened at the beginning of 2004-2005 when everyone was imagining that their skills are similar to Daniel Negreanu’s, due to his origins from the region. During this period there hasn’t been any regulation in place and all players had the possibility of engaging into playing poker online on any poker room from around the world.
Things have changed in the mean time when the online gambling industry was regulated in Romania at the end of 2013 and things started shifting towards a more responsible industry in which players were fewer, but started spending more and stronger communities were built.
888poker has remained a key and trusted brand in the region, attracting players each year to WSOP Europe and also to their online poker room with the most realistic deposit bonuses and play methods.
We must also mention that WSOP Europe (WSOPE) is returning to King’s Resort Rozvadov for the third consecutive year, with the central Europe locale and venue playing host for the 2019 edition this Fall.
WSOPE is set to run from October 15 to November 4, again featuring 10 official WSOP gold bracelet events. In 2018, the event schedule saw 6,028 entries compete for €20,997,184 in prize money.
It is a very popular tournament that gives Eastern Europeans and all European players a chance to compete in the heart of Europe, easily accessible for everyone. It is by far the most popular event in Europe.
In order to sum it all up, there is nothing peculiar about the poker industry in Eastern Europe versus the poker industry from the other sides of the world, it’s just having trustworthy poker rooms that offer players from regulated jurisdictions to develop their poker skills and also compete in international tournaments.
