Official language: Portuguese
Population: 10,676,910
Currency: Euro (EUR)

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

Poker in Portugal
Poker in Portugal is only allowed inside casinos. The country has fewer than 10 casinos because licensing is strictly controlled by the government. Most of these casinos offer poker of some kind, and a few have dedicated poker rooms. The popularity of the game is growing, and some good poker players are coming out of the country. For example, in 2008 Portugal's João Barbosa won the Warsaw leg of the European Poker Tour (EPT).

Portugal has also seen some good tournament action in recent years. Since 2006, Betfair Portuguese Poker Tour Espinho has been running every year. This is the largest poker tournament in Portugal. In February of 2009, the Estoril Casino, which is one of Europe's largest land casinos, hosted the Betsson Live Poker Tournament, which had a prize pool of $USD 1 million.

Online Poker in Portugal
Online poker in Portugal faces a difficult situation. The Portuguese government has given a few licenses for operating online gambling sites in the country, but all have gone to the Games Department of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (SCML), which runs a state monopoly over all lotteries and sports betting in the country. No other internet gambling sites are allowed to operate in the country, and the Portuguese government has forced local ISPs to block many foreign sites so that players cannot use them.

Portuguese online poker still thrives in spite of the bans. The two largest poker tournaments in the country are run by major international online poker sites, and both run online qualifier satellites. Many players who compete in these satellites are foreign themselves, but there are still many Portuguese players who find ways to play online poker.