Visit Vibrant Kiev! Poker In Europe by Nic Szeremeta
Interesting place Europe. Full of surprises. Take Kiev for example, capital of the Ukraine which was one of the former states of the USSR.
I was invited there this summer and expected it to be a rather grey industrialised place populated by rather grey people driving around in rust buckets instead of cars. Instead I discovered a vibrant city with wide treelined avenues, street cafes, gold-domed churches and a rocking night life. Oh yes... and 72 casinos.
Some of these are not really worthy of the name and consist of a roulette table, a blackjack and a casino stud. And guess what they didn't have ... slots. Apparently the locals don't like slots, won't play them and so the casinos don't as a rule bother to install them.
Only three of the casinos offer poker as we know it and a small four day tournament at one of them, the Mirald, was the reason for my trip. A handful of the usual suspects flew into town, among them a party of half a dozen Italians who proceeded to win almost all the tournament prize money available. Only other player to get a look in was Muscovite Andrei Kashihin who won one of the competitions and placed second in another.
The locals, for whom the game of preference appears to be pot limit Omaha, were a bit thin on the ground and the events were all two table affairs.
But as the organiser Stasko Stibilj observed: "We have to start somewhere." Stasko knows all about "starting somewhere". He is not Ukrainian but Slovenian.
In his home country it was he who had the vision of starting poker and staging tournaments attractive enough to pull in overseas players. His success can be measured by the fact that the Torneo di Poker at the Park Casino in Nova Gorica on the Slovenian-Italian border is now a popular fixture in the European tournament calendar.
Not surprisingly he has a plan. Kiev may have three and a half million souls who call it home but the majority of them are not going to be much of an asset to the poker scene as the average monthly wage works out at about $100 or so. The locals who do play are mainly other club owners or people in business. But what Kiev does have is a massive population of people from other countries, Americans, English, Germans, Italians and so on who are in town to grow the country's economy and infrastructure. There are thousands of them and they've got money.
So Stasko is figuring out ways of getting some of these through the door and into a safe low-limit poker game or two. He is aided by the fact that Kiev casinos are super generous when it comes to comps. Even alcohol and cigarettes are free if you are playing.
And the Mirald, part of a small three casino group, is expanding to larger premises next year which will have a purpose built poker room. When this is up and running there will be another international tournament on the programme. It won't be the WSOP but it will probably be worth a shot if you happen to be in the area.
Europe that is.
Nic Szeremeta is Managing Editor of Poker Europa magazine. He has also won several events across Europe and was the first non-American winner of the WSOP Media crapshoot (1996). You can e-mail Nic at: NicSz@bigfoot.com
This story was first published in the Sep 9th issue of Poker Player.
Nic Szeremeta is Managing Editor of Poker Europa magazine. He has also won several events across Europe and was the first non-American winner of the WSOP Media crapshoot (1996). You can e-mail Nic at: 
