Scandinavia News

What's Happening?

Grebbestads Poker Club hosted a large 600-player competition with a comparatively low buy-in the last weekend of March. The tournament was a huge sucess – from both the players' and the host's point of view. Grebbestad is situated an hour by car from Norway, and the Norwegians participating in this event found a solution for the Norwegian Championships: Instead of challenging the local police, they will host their championship in Sweden this spring!



Lately, two smaller poker clubs on the West Coast have been forced to close. The police do not usually care about well-run poker clubs, but in one case, the club illegally sold beer, which irritates the authorities. Precisely due to this reason, it is very important to host big, hugely popular events like the Grebbestad tournament. Bridge has its bridge weeks, when people not only play cards, but also spend time together playing golf, sailing, enjoying good food, or just making conversation. The Grebbestad tournament shows that the same is possible with poker – that poker is the new public pleasure. One of Sweden's two largest evening newspapers even reported live from the competition! This is important; in order to influence public opinion, it is important to project a positive image of the newest popular game.



Grebbestad held the European record for number of competitors – for an entire week, when Betsson hosted its poker cruise between Norway and Scandinavia; 737 players, mostly Scandinavians, played poker and partied for 23 hours. How do you finish a tournament with such a large field in such short time? You play a double shootout, ending in a final with 36 players. A large number of one-table tournaments were played, in which the winner and runner-up from each table moved on to the second heat. In the second heat, the same thing happened: The winner and runner-up proceeded to the finals, which was played as a regular tournament. As a side event to this tournament, a high-roller event took place, in which well-known players such as Dan

Harrington, Johan Storåkers, Edgar Skjervold, and Henning Granstad participated. Åge Spets won the main event and Froge Fagerli won the high-roller tournament.

Online
Two big things have happened in the Swedish online poker community. The Swedish Poker Federation has announced the provider for the Swedish Championship of Online Poker. The choice fell to Nordicbet, and the tournament will have a guaranteed prize pool of $2.5 million, with the buy-in being only $300. Considering the fact that only Swedish players are allowed to enter, this is one of the largest prize pools of all time (other sites have had as large a guaranteed prize pool, but the buy-in has been around $1,000 and the tournaments have been open for everyone to enter). The competition will take place over two days, with $10,000 in starting chips and 20-minute periods between increases in the blinds – a very player-friendly structure, just a championship event should be.



The other big event in the Swedish online community is state-owned company Svenska Spel opening its own poker room. The poker room is open only to Swedish players. Svenska Spel is above all a sportsbook that has seen revenues from poker disappear from the state budget. Despite considerable limits being imposed on marketing of the poker room, the client was downloaded 33,000 times the first day, and already having 5,000 players online simultaneously, it is bound to be a success. The site has a rake that's lower than the industry norm – 2.5 percent up to $2.50 (no-limit) and $2 (limit).

Ola Brandborn is a blogger for Poker.se.