Online poker’s darkest days came in 2011 when the George Bush induced “Black Friday” brought the U.S poker industry to a screeching halt. While this was a major obstacle for online poker aficionados in the United States, it was a blessing in disguise for poker sites based outside the country.
The traffic, which earlier went to domestic poker sites, now shifted to websites based around the world.
These events also gave poker enthusiasts an opportunity to branch out to other countries. Kristin Wilson, an American expatriate who settled in the South American nation of Costa Rica decided to jump in on the opportunity and started an online movement called “Poker Refugees” to tide over the dire poker situation in the United States.
Armed with the knowledge that a lot of people in the United States played poker online for a living, she decided to offer the thousands of poker pros in the country a getaway through which they could continue pursuing their hobby and occupation.
Speaking to pokernews.com, she said, “ All I could think was – it could be years until this mess is sorted. People will need to leave the US to get back online, but how would they know what to do? I decided to create a way for them to get set up in a foreign country, virtually overnight."
The result of this was Poker Refugees, a travel and relocation company, which was created keeping in mind the needs of poker communities disrupted by regulation not only in the US but also across the world.The service is meant for those online poker players whose careers have stalled after poker was unexpectedly prohibited in the region.
India too has a burgeoning number of poker pros who have built entire careers online and want to progress further by moving to higher stakes which are not exactly viable in the country. Such pros could use a website like this, which, in its first year successfully relocated more than one hundred and fifty poker players from the United States to Canada, Costa Rica and Mexico.
This was way back in 2010. From such humble beginnings, Kristin’s firm has managed to relocate more than 600 poker players across 20 countries. Earlier, the firm usually serviced young American twenty-somethings who could drop everything and move countries at the drop of a hat.
Now, her clientele is spread across the continents of Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. Proving that age is no barrier for relocation, she has also seen her clients’ age group climb from young poker prodigies to those past the retirement age.
With the rise of the “digital nomad” concept, more and more people are flocking to it. The profile of people wanting to move has changed from “having” to move to moving countries willingly so as to be able to sample the best poker tournaments with the deepest prize pools.
Poker as a sport has not reached its full potential in India, yet. Various countries across the world offer a far better lifestyle and a better quality of gaming that promise an atmosphere more accepting of a poker player’s way of life while also having regulations which allow the game, or I daresay, the sport to prosper.
If one’s choice is to pursue poker as a way of life, the conditions in this country are not exactly ideal to do that. Why not move abroad, with better prospects for poker via a service that does everything for you while allowing you to pursue what is closest to your heart.
