Official language: Dutch
Population: 16,440,113
Currency: Euro (EUR)

Current Exchange Rate
1 GBP = 1.0681 EUR
1 USD = 0.6754 EUR

Poker in Netherlands
While poker in the Netherlands has not reached the same level of popularity as it has in some other European countries, the number of active Dutch poker players is growing with every passing year. Poker can only be played in casinos, so they are becoming the poker-hotspots of the Dutch gambling world. The country's biggest casino, called the Holland Casino Amsterdam, hosts regular small one-day tournaments, as well as a huge annual 9-day poker event called the Master Classics of Poker.

In late 2008, Professor Van der Genugten, a Dutch authority in the field of probability and statistics, retired from his long university career. During his retirement speech, Van der Genugten revealed that according to his extensive studies, poker is definitely a game of skill, and should be legal to play anywhere in the Netherlands. The Dutch Supreme Court, which previously concluded that poker is a game of chance, is now reviewing their decision with the help of Van der Genugten's 18 page technical paper.

Online Poker in Netherlands
Dutch online poker does not share the same fame as table poker because it is very difficult to find a legal online poker games in the Netherlands. Online gambling is legal at Dutch internet sites, but the government has yet to give out any licenses. Last year Holland Casino, which controls all casinos in the country, applied for a license to operate online, but the Dutch senate shut them down.

The only other option players have is to play online poker at foreign sites. There are many internet poker rooms that accept players from the Netherlands, but the Dutch government tries very actively to prevent people from using foreign online poker sites. They have even given Dutch banks a blacklist of online gambling companies that they cannot deal with. The EU is pressuring the Dutch government to change their policy, but in the meantime, Dutch online poker is not so easy to come by.