Championship Times in Scandinavia - Danish Live Champion
Søren Kongsgaard became the new Danish champion after three days of play over the second weekend in September. The
setup was quite extraordinary; a few players had been voted to the final phases at the Casino Copenhagen, while the rest had to qualify through satellites. It's a bit curious, but now that I think of it, maybe it's a good idea for getting a well-deserved champion. You can't buy your way into the finals; you have to deserve it - either by qualifying or by past merits. I like it when people do things the other way around to make the game more popular, instead of arguing that "it has to be a certain way, because we've always done it like this!"
Online Scandinavian Championships
The Swedes will play their online championships beginning Nov. 25. Nordicbet.com sponsors and guarantees $1 million in the prize pool. The Norwegians will play Nov. 18 onward, with Betsson sponsoring and adding $100,000.
All of these championships are held in collaboration between sites and the national poker federations, which is a good way for the federations to get more money without forcing a symbolic membership fee on their members. An interesting twist in the Swedish and Norwegian tournaments is that they will be broken when play reaches the final tables, and the players will be flown to another country to finish off two days later - on laptops, but at the same table, so that they can study their opponents. It will be live online, or whatever you want to call it. The final tables will be filmed and streamed to the Internet, and in the case of Norway, it also will be shown on Viasat. Very interesting!
Taxation problems
Swedish rules regarding taxation of poker winnings are crystal clear - or so we thought. Since poker is classified as a lottery by the Swedish revenue service, winnings from another EU country are tax-free, and winnings outside the EU are to be taxed 30 percent (without allowing for tax-deductible expenses like hotels and buy-ins). In other words, as long as you
know the law, you're cool; that is, until the revenue service decided that some players, especially Ken Lennard, are to be taxed for money they won in the
London Open tournament. The company World Poker Exchange Ltd, registered in Antigua, arranged the competition, according to the tax officials, and they are therefore seeking taxes for the more than $100,000 that Ken won. But reasoning like this will complicate a lot of things. The
EPT event in the Bahamas or the
Betfair Asian Poker Tour, for instance, will suddenly be tax-free, despite being played outside the EU, as British companies are arranging them.
The tax man also wants Ken to pay taxes on every cent he won in the 2005
World Series of Poker, even though he was sponsored and owned the rights to only 30 percent of his winnings. Suddenly, Swedish poker players risk having to pay taxes on money they've never had - even to the point where they might lose by winning! Since the Scandinavian governmental agencies have a tendency to think alike, it will be very interesting to see what will happen to Annette Obrestad after winning the
WSOP Europe. She was 50 percent sponsored, and the event was held by Harrah's, a U.S. company. I think there's a risk that Annette will get to keep only a very small part of the £1,000,000 she rightfully won.
Ola Brandborn is a writer and blogger for poker.se.
