Poker in the Solomon Islands

Casinos with Poker

• Pacific Casino Hotel
• Coral Sea Casino & Resort

The Solomon Islands is a country located on its namesake archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. It is a former German and British colony, gaining independence in 1978.

Land based gambling has always been legal and regulated since the islands were a sovereign nation. Actually, it has been legal since before that, as the Gaming and Lotteries Act was passed by the local legislature in 1961, still under the rule of the British Empire.

The gambling laws have seen many amendments in the past few decades. However, what has never changed is that casinos have always been a big part of the country’s tourist-driven economy.

To this day, many hotels and resorts have gambling facilities within them. Their per capita casino is high even compared to most European countries, with 4 gambling houses (according to Google) running in a nation of around 700,000 people. However, all of them are located in the capital (and the most populous) city of Honiara. Outside the capital city, you’ll have trouble finding action.

As for poker action in the Honaira-based casinos, only one of the 4 mentions a poker room on their website, while another mentions “video poker machines”. You can read about them later. Online gambling, including poker, is also legal in this island nation in the Pacific.

Famous Solomon Islander Poker Players

The Hendon Mob doesn’t have a Solomon Island-specific all time money list. In fact, they don’t even have any players from this country listed in their database. However, you can find two players who listed the Solomon Islands as their location on the online poker tournament database PocketFives.

One of them plays under the screen name “mrmojo728” on PokerStars, as well as two now defunct poker sites, Full Tilt and UltimateBet. He has $9,822 in online MTT cashes. The other uses the alias “aquavitix” on PokerStars, and has $7,312 in online MTT cashes.

– Playing Live Poker in the Solomon Islands –

   Live Poker Legislation in the Solomon Islands

We covered some of this in our intro. The first piece of gambling legislation was passed under British rule in 1961. In 1978, the island nation won its independence from The Crown.

Since then, the gambling legislation has been amended a number of times. The latest version is from 2004. All types of land based casino games are legal (evidently, including poker) as long as it is properly licenced.

Licencing and regulation of gambling establishments in the country are under the purview of the Gaming and Lotteries Board. The legal gambling age is 18.

  Live Poker Venues in the Solomon Islands

A simple Google search yields you 4 results for casinos in the Solomon Islands. However, only two of them have websites, or any additional information available about them on the internet.

One is the Pacific Casino Hotel (which is strangely listed as “Supreme Casino” on Google Maps) in the capital city of Honiara. According to their website, they do have a poker room. As they put eloquently it: “Poker, the king of card games, is an exciting blend of strategy, mind games and the random fall of the cards. It can be played simply for fun or with a great deal of complexity.”

However, this doesn’t tell us anything about the game types, the stakes, or whether they’re offering cash games or tournaments. You can try contacting them for more information through phone (+677 25201) or through email (reservation@thepch.com).

The other casino with a working website is the Coral Sea Casino & Resort, also located in Honiara. They do not write anything about a poker room on their site, only telling us that they have 64 video poker machines on their premises.

– Casinos and Poker Rooms in the Solomon Islands –

– Online Poker in the Solomon Islands –

Online gambling is completely legal in the Solomon Islands. Not only that, their local gambling board also gives out online licences to operators. That is despite the fact that only around 12% of the already small population of 700,000 people have access to the internet.

Therefore, the biggest online poker room out there, PokerStars, restricts players from the region from playing on their site. However, other major poker sites, such as Natural8-GGNetwork or partypoker, do welcome Solomon Islanders looking to play some cards over the internet.