If you’re the kind of person who thinks of sports and immediately envisions balls and oval tracks, you’re probably going to be shocked to find out what Lithuanians have decided to do. Sports are no longer delegated to the big-time jocks and highly trained athletes because Lithuania has declared poker as a sport!
This happened recently when Lithuania’s Department of Physical Education and Sports decided that the Lithuanian Sports Poker Federation is a legit organization. In other words, Lithuania has chosen to view poker as more than just a game played in dark casinos and on laptop computes.
Andrius Tapinas, the president of the Lithuanian Sports Poker Federation, expressed his appreciation about poker now becoming an official sport in his country by saying, “This is an extremely important step in our work. We are receiving congratulations from many of our colleagues abroad and I know that we are breaking thick ice with our progress for similar international initiatives.”
Some good news about this is that there will be nearly no restrictions in Lithuania when it comes to playing poker. People will be able to construct tournaments in lots of different environments now and they won’t have to pass a bunch of red tape to do so either. Other countries may notice what Lithuania has done and take note of this when deciding what to do about the regulations they’ve angled on the game. Wouldn’t it be extremely nice if places like the United States took notice of Lithuanian’s actions? Could it be a possibility for poker to be an Olympic sport?
For now, we will have to wait and see in regards to future developments. But it’s a really good thing to see that a country would think enough of poker to go as far as to declare it a sport.
