Official language: Spanish
Population: 46,157,822
Currency: Euro (EUR)

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

Poker in Spain
Poker is a very popular game in all parts of Spain. Most of the country's 40 casinos offer at least one poker table, and many of the larger casinos have several. The country is especially big on poker tournaments. In 2008, for example, Casino hosted the World Poker Tour. More than 400 entrants turned up for the €5,000 buy-in event.

Spain has also played host to other major tournaments including the World Heads-Up Championship, the European Poker Tour, the 2007 World Cup of Poker Finals, and the Spanish Poker Tour. Spain has also produced a number of the world's top players. Madrid is the home city to one of the greatest living poker players - Carlos "El Matador" Mortensen, the only player to win the World Championship event at both the WSOP and the WPT.

Online Poker in Spain
The big poker tournaments that come through Spain are sometimes connected with online poker sites as well. In 2008, Spain played host to the World Poker Crown Final, which saw players battling for a $1 million first place prize. 888.com Poker sent ten players to the final after they worked their way up the leaderboards in the qualifying rounds.

Soon, Spanish online poker is going to become even bigger. For the past several years, the government of Spain has been working on new legislation that will make internet poker rooms and other forms of online gambling fully legal and regulated. Spain will open up to EU-based internet gambling companies, and licenses will allow them to operate sites that cater to Spanish players. The future of online poker in Spain looks very bright.