Central America and the Caribbean aren’t just flashy “vacay” destinations for wealthy Americans: they are also important gambling centers.

The island of Curacao, which is an overseas territory of the Netherlands, has issued licences for hundreds of online gambling sites, including as prominent ones as Natural8-GGNetwork and the online sportsbook Pinnacle. Recently, the central Dutch government has put some pressure on their Ministry of Finance to raise the standard for issuing licences.

Costa Rica is home to the headquarters of many major online gambling companies. The most familiar one for poker fans is the Winning Poker Network, which includes online rooms such as Americas Cardroom and PokerKing.

But this region is also prominent when it comes to live poker.

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, which ran annually between 2004 and 2019, was one of the world’s biggest live tournament series with super high rollers and poker’s greatest competing for titles. It was held in the Bahamas every year.

Canada, up north, has the Playground Poker Club in Montreal which has been the venue for live streamed high stakes cash games, and WPT and WSOP Circuit events as well. The Maple Leaf Nation also gave poker a WSOP Main Event champion, Jonathan Duhamel in 2010, and one of the best known names in poker, 6-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Daniel Negreanu.

Poker in South America

South America, a huge subcontinent in the Southern hemisphere, has one of the world’s biggest poker hubs: it’s Brazil.

This country of over 200 million people has legal poker, both live and online. This is thanks to a “game of skill” exception for poker – which is a rare example in the world. Oddly enough, for live poker, only tournaments qualify for this exception, but not cash games. This has a ripple effect on the entire South American region, where cash game action is a lot harder to find than tournaments.

But still, that big of a population having access to legal poker has great benefits for the game as a whole. On top of that, one of the nation’s soccer stars, Neymar Jr., is an avid poker fan.

Brazil has also hosted major tournament series in the past, such as WSOP Brazil and the Brazil Series of Poker (BSOP). The Latin American Poker Tour used to have stops across almost every South American country – in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay, to be exact. However, unfortunately, the series discontinued in 2016, after its 9th season.

South American governments tend to be more restrictive on gambling than in Europe or North America. Some, like Chile or Argentina, have just started setting up their legal and regulated online gambling market.

Where there is legal gambling, sports betting is a big favorite – especially betting on these countries’ beloved sport, soccer.

However, to get back to poker, let’s not forget that this continent has given two WSOP Main Event champions to the game. Carlos Mortensen, born in Ecuador, won poker’s most coveted title in 2001 (for $1.5 million). Damian Salas from Argentina triumphed in the very unique online-live tournament hybrid WSOP Main Event in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. He collected $2.551 million along the way.

Discovering Americas: A Hub for Poker and Gambling

Poker in North & Central America

Poker in South America

Americas