Yesterday I spent three hours at an awards thing at Bern’s in Stockholm which sadly enough was a total waste of time. It was for sure the worst ever held in the poker industry. I love those things. It gives me the opportunity to meet old friends. To meet people who does the same things as me. I met a few of them and a few poker players but it was a shock how little poker players they had invited. I really don’t know how they were thinking when it came to invitations cause 95 percent of the people there didn’t have anything to do with the poker and gambling industry. Even if it was a boring venue for me it must have been ever more boring for them.

Me and Dan Glimne

I just read that the Swedish Championship is going to be held at Malta. Say what?

I’m not sure how many of you know how the Swedish law stops us from having it in Sweden. In Sweden we have four casinos run by the government. Apart from playing poker at the casinos everything else is forbidden. The local poker clubs are illegal. At any time they could get a visit by the police and get shut down. Since the casinos is such a winning machine for the government they have no interest in getting other legal actors on the market and do everything they can to make it even more illegal than it already is. They even want to shut down poker sites for us to play on. They want no competition the their own poker site. Yes you’ve heard right. We have a government who runs it’s own poker site. How interesting is that. They say they have responsible gambling and cause of this they should be the only actor on the market. Since many years all poker sites have responsible gambling so this isn’t anything they are alone with. Even though we’ve had the Swedish Championship for many years the government decided to their own. So we now have TWO live SM (Svenska mästerskapen – Swedish Poker Championship) and TWO online ones. So every year we have four Swedish champions. Confusing? Yes.

Cause of the law the Swedish Poker Federation has held “SM” in Tallinn in Estonia. This hasn’t been good but as good as it can when they wont let us run it in Sweden. They now decided to run it in Malta which is even further away. A very bad idea if you ask me. As if Malta wasn’t bad enough. They decided to place it at the same time as the very popular EPT San Remo and right before the grand final in Monte Carlo. I’m not sure but I think they will loose at least 30 potential players cause of this. Whole May is free when it comes to poker schedules so why place it during to most hectic time? Why not wait until the EPT tour is over like they usually do?

Now I’m gonna take my over all frustration and turn it into something positive. I’m gonna take all that energy to pack boxes. Tomorrow I’m moving to a new lovely place which is my dream neighborhood in Stockholm. I can’t wait!