Do people play poker everywhere else in the world or is it strictly a Western game?

I don’t want to sound ignorant, but I want to expand my overall poker knowledge. Do people play poker in other parts of the world like South America or Asia? When I tried to Google Asian Poker, all I got was pictures and bios of Asian Americans players…that was not helpful to say the least… Is Texas Hold’em strictly a western favorite? What sorts of poker do people play in other parts of the world? For example, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Brazil, etc.

Poker is pretty much everywhere nowadays. In fact, Macau has some of the highest stakes cash games on the planet.

Try looking up "Macau Poker" on Google and you should see some pretty interesting results.

I living in Kazakhstan (Central Asia) and many our people loves and plays poker

They play everywhere, just have a look at the micro stakes on PokerStars, so many Russians and i even saw Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Tadshikistan, etc. !

On pokerstars you see loads of players from South America; Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay; and quite a few from Asia; India, Taiwan, China.
Also Middle East, Africa and Australasia show up on pokerstars.
In fact nearly every country with the exceptions of some like USA, France, Italy where national legislation keeps them from the international site.

from where i am, which is Philippines btw, poker is a very popular game. i know there are a lot of online poker players here and we do have live poker tournaments every once in a while. we have lots of casinos and i learned that two casinos will be opening here maybe next year or in 2016.

you can also google 'asian poker tour'. they organize most of the live poker tournaments in asia.

If you do a simple search for "Poker" on Wikipedia, you will find dozens if not hundreds of variations of Poker. Right now, Chinese Open Face Poker, Japanese Closed Face Poker and Omaha seem pretty popular these days. I'm pretty sure that these poker games don't originate in the west as they have oriental names.

i did see some ppl from south america/asia at the micros but few maybe they play on their own platforms

You can play free online poker from anywhere, if you have internet. Now days there are many websites offers free poker texasholdem which give unlimited benefits of win cash prizes and also give chance to play in their live events. You can join it for free as well as paid membership also available. But, only choose safe poker website which are legal.

Yeah, it's a global game now.

I always wonder why i don´t see more chinese or indian players on the many sites i play, they have billions of people?!

I've never been to a country that doesn't play some variation of poker.

Originally Posted by cmahon

I've never been to a country that doesn't play some variation of poker.

Yeah, seems like it is everywhere now.

Everyone plays poker, and to be honest small forms of similar poker started outside of the US many decades ago.

Originally Posted by Daniel72

I always wonder why i don´t see more chinese or indian players on the many sites i play, they have billions of people?!

When I was watching WSOP last week I saw loads of oriental players, didn't notice any Indians though. I think online however there are alot of restrictions in areas of Asia of what you can and cannot do online.

I like to click on a few players and see what country they are from. I played with some people from Canada and Germany today.

closing this thread because it adds nothing , and is used by the post whores to appear to be active members . Comment on each others hands guys and post your own hands that you had problems with.