Poker is a game of chance and luck and privatly owned tournaments can therefore not legally be played in Denmark, according to a majority rule of the Denmark Supreme Court. Meaning that only state  organisations with a may legally offer poker games to the public.

The Supreme court therefore upheld the ruling of the country’s Eastern High Court, finding Frederik Hostrup Pedersen, the head of the DPF (Danish Poker Federation), guilty on arranging gambling events around the country.

The Eastern High Court over-turned the initial ruling by Copenhagen’s city court in favour of the poker federation allowing tournaments to be played there, handing down a 5,000 kroner fine to Hostrup Pedersen. However, after a majority of the Supreme Court justices found him guilty, all agreed to dismiss the fine that was handed, saying that the city court rule put the illegality of poker tournaments in doubt.

The city court rulings allowing privatly owned poker tournaments stemmed from June 2007. The subsequent High Court reversal of that decision in December of the same year affected around 500,000 residents who regularly played many poker in tournaments.

“It’s an unfortunate rule because we wanted to show Danes that poker is truly is a thinking man’s sport compaed to the game of chess or backgammon,” said Hostrup Pedersen.

But a new proposal from the Conservative Party is seeking to make private poker tournaments legal once more. As long as the maximum entrance fee to a tournament is 300 kroner.

“You should be allowed to have a fun evening with your friends at a privately held poker tournament without feeling like a run amock criminal,” exclaimed Tom Behnke, the party’s political affairs spokesman. “The alternative today is that people who want to play are forced to go to a casino or log on to an online casino.”

In the last few days, a united Poker public group in the state of Israel, has filed a discussion on the Supreme court about how poker is 'a man’s thinking  sport', and can be considered legal in any form. The court has not yet given it’s vertdict, but from the look of it, it might have the same fate as in Denemark.

Most people has the assumption that Poker is indeed a gambling game (luck game) and has nothing to do with Sport or ‘Thinking Game’ and therefore the majority is favored for the negative sides of that game.