On the 22nd of last week, a national poker tournament was held in Kamiichi Town, Toyama Prefecture. Poker is said to be experiencing an “unprecedented boom”… Why was a poker tournament held in Kamiichi Town?

Probing each other’s intentions, deceiving each other, negotiating… Approximately 200 players gathered in Kamiichi Town, Toyama Prefecture, to compete for the top spot.

Poker is a game that is said to have 100 million players worldwide.
There are many tournaments where the winning prize exceeds 1 billion yen.

Poker Circle Representative Masanobu Koshiba:
“I started just before the COVID-19 outbreak, and at the time there were said to be around 100,000 people playing the sport in Japan, but now it’s said to be around 2 million, and it’s growing at an incredible rate.”

Poker is a card game in which players compete to come up with the strongest combination of cards using numbers and suits. The rules are simple and it can be enjoyed by people of all ages.