Poker Tournament Dusseldorf

4/15/2022 admin

Nov 26, '20 - Dec 06, '20 2020 WPTDeepstacks - Ultimate Poker Showdown Emperors Palace. The complete schedule of Poker Tournaments in Germany, including poker rooms, starting times, buy-ins, games, Texas Holdem, prize pool guarantees and other Attention Poker Rooms: Get your Real-Time Live Action on PokerAtlas!

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Volker Dahne

If you're in Germany, you're probably left wondering what kind of poker games you're actually allowed to play. Currently, the confusing legal situation in the country is not helping anyone answer that question.

His most recent win in the 2018 World Series of Poker tournament finally brought him the flattering title of poker king. What’s more, 2018 brought this 32-year old the brightest moments of his career, considering the fact that Bonomo won every tournament he enrolled. The 28 year old, from Dusseldorf, Germany, says poker is 'just a hobby for me. I play only a bit if I have time.' He has played four or five EPT events prior to this, but usually plays tournaments online. Schillhabel is studying sociology and works to pay for his studies. He has no ambitions to be professional. 'I like the game it's fun,' he said.

With norms to regulate online poker left in the hands of 16 different Länder (German Federal States) and home games partially allowed after a recent ruling from the German Federal Administrative Court, playing poker in the country that produced champions like Marvin Rettenmaier and 2013 GPI Player of the Year Ole Schemion is far more difficult than one would guess.

So, while German players keep crushing one international event after another, let's have a quick look at how things work in Europe's largest national economy.

Live poker in Germany: What is allowed, and what isn't?

In Germany, only state casinos are allowed to host poker cash games or tournaments. All sorts of real-money gambling poker outside of casinos (like home games, card clubs, etc.) is forbidden, and police raids of underground games are not unheard of.

There are however a few exceptions: playing for very small stakes in home games is not prosecuted, and sometimes it is also possible to find particular tournaments allowed to be organized by non-state casino hosts.

On Jan. 27, 2014, the German Federal Administrative Court ruled that tournaments with very low buy ins (around €15) do not constitute illegal gambling. This law applies so long as the buy-ins are mainly used to cover the costs of the event and are not redistributed among the players.

Despite the fact it does not refer to events with significant figures, the ruling was widely welcome by Germany’s poker community as the country has a rather vivid scene of those very low buy-in tournaments.

The most prominent host for that kind of events is the PokerBundesliga, a circuit which offers €15 tournaments where the participants can win entries to other tournaments. Their yearly final in Leipzig regularly attracts over 1,000 players.

In Short: Poker in casinos is allowed, low-stakes home games are OK, and low-stakes tournaments are also OK.

Online Poker in Germany: Where things get confusing

It is difficult to have a complete understanding of Germany’s online poker regulation. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that each one of the 16 German Federal States has its own laws regarding online gambling and does not request to work together with the others to build a homogeneous, national system.

What we do know is that 15 of the 16 German states do not allow to for the providing of online poker services, even though none of those 15 different pieces of legislation mention whether it is allowed to play online poker or not.

Up until now no player has ever been prosecuted in Germany for playing online poker, but legal certainty regarding online poker is not provided by the legislation in those 15 states.

Currently, all German states are working on an amendment to the current gambling law, which in its current revision reinforces the strict prohibition of all forms of online gambling with the exception of the federal lottery.

But as the European Court of Justice has already decreed in 2010, that such a broad prohibition is against EU law, it seems likely that this new revision will be overruled once again.

One German Federal State, Schleswig-Holstein, is the only one that tried to differentiate from others and decided to allow both online gambling and sports betting in mid-2011.

Schleswig-Holstein started issuing licenses in early 2012 for some companies to offer online gambling to Schleswig-Holstein residents. Among the first rooms to secure a license from the state are industry leaders PokerStars, 888 and Ladbrokes.

Unfortunately for poker players, right after Schleswig-Holstein passed this online regulation, the state government was voted out of office, and the newly elected governor of Schleswig-Holstein announced his intention to revoke the whole piece of regulation.

All this said, up until now the new state government did not follow through on that announcement, even if the current situation in Schleswig-Holstein is a stalemate since neither players nor providers have any legal certainty that online poker stays legal and regulated in the state.

In short: Providing online gambling is not allowed (with the current exception of Schleswig-Holstein), and playing online is not prosecuted.

Poker’s tax heaven … until you win

In general, poker players do not have to pay taxes in Germany as gambling winnings are non-assessable. Up until 2010 poker was considered a game of chance by the German jurisdiction.

Broadly this still holds true to date, even if Cologne's Financial Court ruled in October 2012 that under certain circumstances revenues generated via poker tournaments are taxable.

In the now famous Eddy-Scharf-Ruling, which forced the two-time WSOP bracelet holder to pay taxes on his winnings as 'they counted as commercial income as they were linked to his personal skills,' the Cologne court decreed that a person who regularly generates income via poker games has to pay regular income taxes on those revenues.