Discover Costa Rica: Your Guide to Poker and Gambling

Costa Rica is a great place for gamblers. Games of chance are popular both among locals and tourists alike.

According to worldcasinodirectory.com, they have 32 land casinos in operation – not bad for a nation of just under 5 million people. However, pokerdiscover.com only lists 5 poker rooms across the small Central American country.

Despite that, they were home to a stop of the Latin American Poker Tour each time in the series’ first three seasons. Hotels can easily host one-time poker events, such as the LAPT.

It’s also important to note that many of the casinos aren’t the size you’d expect in, for example, Las Vegas. Many of them are small rooms inside large hotels or resorts.

Costa Rica is known for the lax legal environment when it comes to gambling. This especially holds true for online gambling operators, for which no relevant legislation or regulatory body is in place. Perhaps this is the reason that the Winning Poker Network –  which includes the famous Americas Cardroom –  along with hundreds of other online gambling companies chose San José, Costa Rica as location for their headquarters.

However, gambling online for Costa Rican residents is still technically illegal – only operators enjoy a total lack of legal scrutiny. But in reality, the players themselves have very little to fear too – online bettors are never prosecuted.

Famous Costa Rican Poker Players

Humberto Brenes has cashed for over $6 million in live tournaments. He has two WSOP gold bracelets. He won the $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha event for $128,000; and the $2,500 Limit Hold’em event for $149,000, both in 1993.

He came in 2nd in the $15,000 WPT Championship at the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic for $923,475 in December 2004. That is his biggest single live tournament cash to date.

Aside from his great tournament results, Brenes is also known for his brash and upbeat behavior at the poker table – the man definitely likes to put on a show, especially when he’s celebrating winning a big pot.

Author and poker player Max Stern from Costa Rica is a 3-time WSOP bracelet winner. He took down the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8-or-Better event in 1995, as well as the $2,500 7-Card Stud Spilt and the $3,000 No Limit Hold’em events, both in 1997. Overall, he cashed for $1.494 million in live tournaments during his career.

There have been multiple extremely successful online MTT players from Costa Rica. Perhaps they’re poker players who were drawn to the country by its lax gambling laws, rather than Costa Rican natives.

Chris “Big Huni” Hunichen has amassed over $12.6 million in online poker tournament winnings while playing from a Costa Rican location. Chris Oliver, who plays under the screen name “imdanuts” has outearned even him, with $13 million in career earnings online.

A Costa Rican player with the screen name “munchenHB” on PokerStars and “ilove2fish” on partypoker has cashed for $11.044 million in online poker tournaments.