Discover Finland's Thriving Poker Scene and Gambling Laws

Online gambling, be it poker or sports betting, is very popular in Finland with hundreds of thousands of players in a nation of 5 million. Live poker, on the other hand, is in a whole different state with only one operating casino in the whole country. The second casino is expected to open up in 2020.

In early 2017, the government decided to merge three of its state-run companies dealing with different fields of gambling – casino operator RAY, lottery organizer Veikkaus and horse betting provider Fintoto – into one state-run mega-corporation named Veikkaus. Now, similar to what Svenska Spel used to be in Sweden or what Danske Spil is in Denmark, they have a legal monopoly on the country’s land-based gambling market.

The internet betting company PAF remained separate from Veikkaus – however, they too are owned by a local Finnish government. They also host games of chance on cruise ships.

Famous Finnish Poker Players

Patrik Antonius is one of the true legends of the game. He has quite a unique career path, he’s a former tennis player-turned male model-turned poker pro.

He used to regularly play on the most classic and most watched poker TV shows, such as Poker After Dark on NBC and High Stakes Poker on The Game Show Network. He also has over $12 million in live tournament earnings, according to the Hendon database – evidently, he leads the Finnish players’ list on the site.

He’s been playing the biggest buy-in poker tournaments since the early 2000’s to this day. His biggest score is winning $3.154 million for coming in 2nd in a HK$2,000,000 Triton event in Macau in 2018.

Second on Hendon’s Finland all time money list is Juha Helpi. The 42-year-old cardplayer has $7.934 million in tournament winnings to his name. He won a gold bracelet in the 2019 WSOP in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em event. He bagged over $306,000 for that victory. He also has a runner-up finish for $399,000 from the 2005 €25K EPT High Roller in Malta.

Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies plays high stakes PLO cash games online. He’s up over $300,000 after almost 500,000 hands. According to his Wikipedia page, he had a very special introduction to poker – at the age of 15, he allegedly played in Patrik Antonius’ home game.

Sami “LarsLuzak” Kelopuro has cashed for over $5.6 million in online MTT’s during his career. Meanwhile, Jens Kyllönen won the WSOP $25K PLO High Roller event for $1.127 million in 2016.