The issue with the tips (how much and when should we tip? Should we tip at all?) exist in all the countries with poker clubs. The major part of the problem is that the decision is up to the players. From one side, one doesn’t want to seem unthankful chipshot, but from the other side tips can negate all the profit, especially at the lower stakes.

To tip or not to tip – that is up to every individual. It is common to leave 10% of the bill to the waiters in restaurants. This is too much in terms of poker. However, in Japan, for instance, tips aren’t habitual and the level of service is always top. Should you try to handle the Japanese waiter the tip – in most cases – he politely won’t take it.

WPT and WSOP have already paid a visit to Eastern Europe. They were a success. West starts to realize it’s not just about finding treasure in Asia, something is out there In some European countries. Georgia, Armenia, Poland, Moldova, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan all have huge demand and growing passion towards poker.

Not so long ago Tbilisi hosted the first stage of WSOPC. American took home victory, Steve O’Dwyer was the best high roller. And there are reasons for that. But we’ll talk about it later.

World Series of Pokers wasn’t the first. Tbilisi hosted first stage of World Poker Tour National last year. It was a tremendous success. Looks like movement at WSOP started right after that series: it was a successful market so we should try something as well.

The champion of the most expensive tournament in Georgia history is… American Brian Senie ($85,800)… Highroller tournament was won by Steve O’Dwyer himself, one of the top players in the world. The list of those who travelled to Georgia also included: Daniel Cates, Dominik Panka, Konstantin Puchkov, Vitaliy Lunkin, Dzmitry Urbanovich and Peter Eastgate. The latter opened the series.

Debut of World Series of Poker in Tbilisi was a success. The proof of this fact is that guaranteed money were covered almost in every single event! Main Event had 395 entries registered with guaranteed prize fund exceeded by $90,000 making $390,000. The same story with all other events.

All the sevens rings found their owners, many of them just visited Georgia for a brief time. Meanwhile, about the guests. There were lots of good reviews and comments about local people and players. Famous Georgian hospitality and cordiality can’t stop surprising guests. It’s uneasy to get used to it. But we’ll come back to that.

On March, 3-9 in The Sports Palace of capital of Georgia, in the very heart of the city, a grand event will take place: World Series of Poker makes a first stop in Eastern Europe! PokerDiscover team made a special service package for our players and subscribers who decided to visit series.

WSOP took a step on lands of Eastern Europe for the first time in its history. This stage will go down in history. The most famous tournament series in the world took with itself not just many years of experience of such competition but $700,000 in guaranteed prize money, which is spread between twenty something events.

World Series tournaments have a different structure and many peculiarities. One of which is WSOP Circuit branded rings distribution with seven of the tournaments where you can win one at the Georgian stage.  This is some sort of equivalent to WSOP Golden Bracelets but on a smaller scale.

WSOPC Tbilisi Main Event with $1,100 buy-in champion and the best player of the series will go to Las Vegas to participate in the biggest event of the whole season – WSOP Global Casino Championship with $1,000,000 guaranteed.

The first stage of WSOP Circuit in Georgia with guaranteed prize pool of $700,000 scheduled to the beginning of March could have become a disaster or a tournament with gigantic overlays at least. Turned out that all the tournament winnings will be paid without 20% of income tax!..

First info about this enormous tax came from Adjarabet representative in the evening of January, 29^th:

“The situation with taxes is the following – 20% of income tax will be taken from those prize money owners during the payout”.

“It is required by Georgia law. We don’t take commission on this prize fund, like 3% to the stuff or anything else”

A real tropic storm started momentarily. Players were threatening with their fists and were telling they have given the tickets back or going to do that; they were telling all the reservations were cancelled and this entire situation looks like racketeering and stealing from them in the middle of the day.

Extrapolation is a friend of statistician, economist, marketer and any other person who works with huge amounts of data. They are no numbers relevant to poker. Poker stands alone. And sometimes logic behind its development is very hard to get.

Extrapolation can be used to make a forecast of some events or trends. Everything is very chaotic in poker to make some scientific conclusions, however it is very interesting to speak about it.

We’ve already defined the best poker players of 2015, told of the most important events of 2015, it’s time to look into the future.

Other World

The world has changed. It is in human nature that he can’t see everything with an untired eye. There are always tons of factors separating him from the right conclusions. The oil is becoming cheaper with each and every day despite many countries were trying to make the most of it by selling and selling it over the years.

One just can’t change the way of thinking he got through the years momentarily.

TonyBet OFC mini-series on Open Faced Chinese Poker finished in Czech Republic on Prague Poker festival. Russian players showed themselves from the best side and proved they owe this discipline. Russian Maxim Panyak won High Roller title and Alexandra Usoltseva triumphed on Main Event!

Opening tournament was the little one. 108 players took part in it. There were lots of recognizable names but the prize money weren’t that big.

Opening tournament of TonyBet OFC Results:

1. Isabelle Mercier (Canada) – €10,189
2. Frank Gohletr (Germany) – €6,304
3. Petteri Heinonen (Finland) – €4,081
4. Jan Stefek (Czech Republic) – €2,999.

As you can see, there is no Russians among those names.

€10,000 High Roller was much more interesting. There were two Russians in the heads-up: Maxim Panyak and Evgeny Kocherov!

Kharkov city is so rigorous, that all the bans and crises are the child’s play to it. “Kreschatik” is closed, “Imperial” is closed, everything is closed – except for the clubs in Kharkov. The last bastion of poker in Ukraine is not going to yield and, what is more, is going to arrange the biggest event on its land!

From October, 22 to October, 31 THREE Kharkov clubs at the same time will see the event of Ukranian series WSF Poker Tour with 750,000 grivnas (~ $35,000) guaranteed!

This is completely surprising and also somewhat absurd new. “How is this even possible?!” – many people will ask. “We don’t know”, – we’ll answer.

Following the fifth stage of Belarus Poker Tour which has started in Minsk, one of the main events of Russian Poker Tour is also going to have a going here. If everything goes well (and we truly believe everything’s going to be that way), Minsk is going to be assigned to a new status of poker oasis of CIS.

Recently discovered flaws of Live Events series is putting in doubt some words and actions of some tournament directors who used to have crystal reputation in poker community not causing any reproaches.

In particular, reputation of Mike Peltekci took a blow. He was not just the head of Live Events, but directed some other poker tours that were popular in CIS.

Significant key changes in political economical and territorial build-up of the country have happened with the Ukraine during last months. Gambling was also influenced by those reforms. The head of Odessa administration Mikheil Saakashvili plans to legalize casinos on Black Sea shore.

Health care reform, outsourcing of tax custom services, transition of State fiscal service (SFS) under the Ministry of Finance jurisdiction, banking and tax system restructuring – these are just few changes that have been made by the Ukrainian administration to help the system of state functioning work better.

There is a feeling that for very long time someone was holding those initiatives back. And now they are unleashed. Like the old dyke went down and water poured to dry fields.

Authorities don’t think about poker and casinos just yet, however we do know some things about the plans of new Ukrainian leaders. Mikheil Saakashvili is going to apply his experience of gambling houses legalization in Odessa.

First we need to win corruption

Kiev has illegal casinos. In other big cities, including Odessa, they have other undercover gambling houses. Locals, gamblers, local and higher authorities know about this.

No one does nothing about this because law enforcement authorities cover up super profitable industry. Mikheil Saakashvili says it in these very words. The leader of Odessa administration finds corruption as a main problem.  When we win corruption we can legalize casinos.

Ex-president of Georgia has a lot of experience in both spheres. As data of international organization Transparency International says, the level of corruption in Georgia became much lower. The country was considered as one of the most uncorrupted in the world.

Hotel and Casino Golden Palace in Batumi, Georgia

However, experts were talking about some sort of “elite” corruption. Lower and middle levels of power were cleaned, but the top was still rotten.

If we speak about Batumi, approximately in ten years Saakashvili have turned the city into the attractive gambling place for tourists living in the nearby countries. We can’t say that it’s competing with gambling centers of the world, but for some players Batumi has become very attractive.

Odessa cleanup

In the middle of July news about cleanup among government official appeared. Hundreds of them will be fired, some positions will be liquidated. Those cuts are made in many of the political departments of the country.

This is the fight with corruption. One of the methods.

Saakashvili says Odessa need extra investments. Casinos are helpful in this task.

Odessa

Minister of economy and trade of Ukraine Aivaras Abromavicius supports the beginnings of new Ukrainian reforms starter and emphasizes: casinos must not be oriented on local habitats. The main target audience is tourists. This is the reason for gambling houses to be opened at hotels.

In the end of prime minister of the country Arseniy Yatsenyuk was speaking about casino legalization. He offered to give part of the profit to the Ministry of culture.

So that’s what we have. Considering tempo and size of reforms of Ukraine, there is little time left before real changes are made. Reforms about poker are coming as well.

The exhausting first day of Global Poker Masters ended up with the triumphant performance of Team USA, elimination of Team UK and heroic Ukrainians’ run. Today we expect to see the heads up series, 6-max Sit'n'Go and the final battle of two strongest teams.

«The Global Poker Masters is not just another poker event or another Sit-and-Go. It is about skill», – these are GPI Index founder Alex Dreyfus’ words.

Before the competitions started, he had said a lot – and others too, actually. Basically it was all the same: poker must become an international sport; money shouldn’t be the primary concern and so on.

The other day in the Russian poker community a scandal broke out around the Ukrainian regular, Oleksii Khoroshenin, who conned famous players. And “according to the notions” “the victims” ought to pay EPT champion a great sum of money…

In the “underworld” an oral agreement remains valid. Every single person has to answer for his words; every single person has to meet the conditions of the agreement – despite all the other factors.

Even if your “partner” turned out to be a cheat…

Just about a year ago poker in the Ukraine was listed as a sport. Clubs are placed all over the country – in Lvov, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkassy and, certainly, Kiev.

History of the Ukrainian industry of gambling is very much similar to the one in Russia. The law which forbids gambling came in force in 2009. It actually made a lot of casinos and slots machine clubs working undercover.

5 years later we can’t say that the situation has changed significantly. Big and little gambling houses are being closed for several times a year. It is a common practice.