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Poker in Peru

Introduction

Capital: Lima

Population: 31,990,000

Currency: Peruvian Sol (PEN)

Time Zone: UTC-5

Casinos with Poker

  • Poker Peru
  • La 490 Poker Club
  • Atlantic City Casino
  • Casino El Polo
  • Poker Club Green River
  • Poker Cusco

Luckily, Peru is one of the few South American nations with a fully legal and regulated gambling industry. Locals and tourists alike frequently enjoy the hospitality of the Peruvian casinos year-round. This market produces hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year.

Worldcasinodirectory.com lists a total of 42 casinos currently in operation in Peru. The country is also the home of the famous horse racing track, the Hipódromo de Monterrico in Lima. It opened all the way back in 1960.

Unlike land based gambling, online gambling does not have a regulatory framework in place in Peru. This is not as bad as it may sound at first – online gambling, including poker, isn’t illegal by any means.

On the contrary, there is absolutely no restriction on what sites to play on if you’re a Peruvian resident. While there are no local gambling sites, you can have your pick of the international ones. However, the Peruvian government reportedly has a proposal planned to change that – more on that later in the section about online poker.

As for live poker, there’s a much bigger selection of operating card rooms than in most South American countries. In the capital city of Lima alone, pokerdiscover.com lists 6. There’s 9 additional poker clubs outside the capital.

Peru hosted a stop of the Latin American Poker Tour six years in a row, from season 3 through season 8.

Famous Peruvian Poker Players

Currently, Diego Ventura sits on top of the Peruvian all time money list on Hendon with $1.250 million in career earnings. 

His biggest score is finishing 2nd in the $10K Main Event at the 2015 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $907,080. He also has an ITM finish in the 2016 WSOP Main Event – he took 279th place in a field of 6,737 players for $36,708. 

Also, Ventura is a very successful online tournament player as well. He has cashed for over $4.8 million in MTT’s on different poker sites. His screen name is “Die Ventura” on PokerStars and “peitodeperu” on partypoker.

Ventura is followed by Hugo Perez on the Peru leaderboard. Perez has cashed for $630,665 in live tournaments during his career. 

Peruvian hotel and restaurant owner Tal Avivi has won two WSOP Circuit rings within one year in 2019 – both in the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas.

A player with the alias “arcornok” on PokerStars, playing from a Peruvian location, has amassed $1.080 million in online tournament cashes. 

– Playing Live Poker in Peru –

   Live Poker Legislation in Peru

As we wrote in our intro, land based gambling is completely legal and regulated in Peru. The Peruvian Gambling Authority is under the purview of the local Ministry of Trade and Tourism (Mincentour for short). Currently, the head of the gambling board is a man named Manuel San Román Benavente.

  Live Poker Venues in Peru

Near the capital city of Lima, the Poker Peru club is located, There, you can play PEN1/2 ($0.30/$0.60) NLHE cash games every day with a minimum buy-in of PEN50 ($15).

If you’re looking for tournaments, you can try the La 490 Poker Club. It’s also located in Lima.

They have a packed tourney schedule, putting on 4-5 events a day. The buy-ins can be as low as just PEV1 ($0.30) with a PEV50 ($15) guaranteed prize pool. The biggest buy-in tournaments you can play there are PEN20 ($6) or PEN25 ($7.5) with GTD’s ranging from PEN1,500 ($450) and PEN2,500 ($750).

While these numbers may not be too appetizing for the high rollers out there, please note that the prize money is most likely bloated in these events with the large number of add-ons and buy-ins that they allow. In some tourneys, you can buy as many as 4 additional stacks of chips.

The Atlantic City Casino in the city of Miraflores was home to the late Latin American Poker Tour events between 2012 and 2015. 

Casino El Polo, another major Peruvian casino, also has a poker room. It’s located in the Santiago de Surco district in Lima. 

You can also play some poker in the Poker Club Green River in the city of Chimbote, or in the Poker Cusco in Cusco.

– Casinos and Poker Rooms in Peru –

Poker Peru

La 490 Poker Club

Atlantic City Casino

Casino El Polo

Poker Club River Green

Poker Cusco

  Online Poker Legislation in Peru

As we wrote in our intro, online gambling is completely unregulated in the country of Peru. We also mentioned a government plan to tax and regulate the market.

The head of the gambling authority gave an interview to a local newspaper about their plan. Yogonet.com reported on this interview, citing Benavente claiming they’re planing on imposing a 12% net gains tax on companies that successfully obtain a Peruvian online gambling licence. However, this piece of legislation hasn’t been passed yet.

As of now, however, Peruvian locals can play on whichever online poker site they choose to, be it PokerStars, partypoker, Natural8, or any other major room. The only thing they don’t have is a local company offering online poker – but that’s not an issue for virtually everyone.