Euro Poker News: Poker in Scandinavia

In my last column, I wrote that you would have to hurry if you wanted to participate in the EPT Copenhagen. I knew that the event would sell out quickly, but I never imagined that the 400 seats would be sold in only 18 hours.

In Sweden, the Swedish championships for online poker were held at NordicBet.com. I'd like to thank the Swedish Poker Federation and NordicBet for a fantastic event: $10,000 in starting chips, 20-minute periods, and more than $1.5 million added by the site! The competition lasted two days, stopping with 30 players remaining and resuming the next day. In my opinion, the event might very well be the best online event ever; the blinds structure was far better than, for instance, the regular Sunday tournaments with huge guaranteed prize pools. First prize was a whooping $700,000 and was won by Henrik Josefsson. Henrik doesn't even have an Internet connection; he stayed at a hotel in order to be able to play!

I've written lots about different poker cruises, but that's not strange. Since our local police departments in Norway, Finland, and Sweden are currently forcing poker clubs all over the countries to cease and desist as rapidly as they can, we have to play in international waters, instead. In my opinion, there's no good reason to force players to play like this. There is one casino in Finland, four in Sweden, and zero in Norway. Sweden is the fifth-biggest country in Europe, and getting from where you live to the nearest casino could easily be a six-hour trip - one way! OK, I can understand why you'd want to restrict cash games to casinos only, but for God's sake, let the people play tournaments for their own small money at their local poker clubs. It's not about fighting over large sums of cash; it's about people meeting and having fun!

Anyway, I digress; so, what about the poker cruises? There's one ship going between Sweden and Finland once a month, and one between Norway and Denmark biweekly. For more information, see PokerCruise.eu. If you want to play poker with Johnny "bad_ip" Lodden and the rest of the Norwegian high rollers cheaply - go by boat!

Speaking of Norway, Ladbrokes Cardplayers member Åge Spets has been crowned Norway's best poker player for 2006. He had many big achivements during the last year, and the biggest one was taking a fourth place in a $1,500 event during the World Series of Poker. In addition, he won the biggest poker event ever to be held in Europe - the Betsson poker cruise, with almost 900 players. Åge also finished in the money during the European Poker Tour event in Baden recently. He is a regular writer for Card Player Norway, and you can read his articles and blogs at CardPlayerNorge.com.

For more Happenings in Europe, visit CardPlayerEurope.com.

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