Poker Players | New Zealand’s Best of the Best

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Famous Poker Players in Kiwi Land
Poker Legislation in New Zealand
Top Poker Players in New Zealand

Famous Poker Players in Kiwi Land

There’s nothing like a good old game of poker and we're here with the best news of all - you'll find the best options for New Zealand players here. We can all agree that poker is a true casino classic that has certainly withstood the test of time. But what’s so special about it? For starters, it has intrigued several players from across the globe, including ones in New Zealand. In fact, some of them are considered to be top Kiwi players who successfully managed to bring the house down by a mile.

A poker table mid-hand: cards face down, chips in the pot — Casino poker is played against the house paytable, not against the rest of the table.Photo: Marce Grez · CC BY 2.0 · source

Poker Legislation in New Zealand

First off, let’s get any legalities out of the way. It is perfectly legal for Kiwi players to engage in online poker. In this case, poker operators are also allowed to offer their services in the country. As far as taxes go, you are not required to pay any taxes on your winnings if you’re casually engaging in online gambling. However, if you are a professional poker player, you may be required to do so due to online gambling being your main source of income.

Top Poker Players in New Zealand

Lee Nelson

Lee Nelson needs no introduction. He has won the Crown Australian Poker Championship twice in a row and has also won the St Maarten even. What’s more is that he managed to bag a staggering NZ$400,000 after he won the Partypoker World Open in England. Other achievements him reaching the semi-final of the VC Cup in England, as well as winning the Victoria Championship.

Sosia Jiang

Sosia Jian is the ultimate poker machine. During the past few years, Sosia walked away with NZ$103,000 NL High Roller after winning the Pokerstars Championship in Macau. She is currently on rank 2 as the best female poker player in the Money List of New Zealand.

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Why a player’s record is worth reading

A tournament record is one of the few things in gambling that is published, dated and open to anyone who wants to check it: the size of the field, the finishing position and the prize are all on record. That makes results a better subject for a story than most, and it also sets the limit on what the story can honestly claim. A record shows what happened at a table; it does not hand over a method anyone can copy.

Poker is also the one casino format where the opponent, rather than the house, is the source of an edge. The room takes its cut from the pot or from the entry fee, and everything above that is won from other players. This is why a familiar name at a final table means something quite different from a lucky spin, and why the study a strong player puts in has no equivalent at a reel game.

The contribution from this part of the world has come mostly through the travelling circuit rather than through a large domestic tournament scene, which is worth remembering whenever a result is described as a national milestone. The room where it happened is usually somewhere else.

If the game rather than the players brought you here, the poker explainer covers the hands, the betting rounds and the points where a decision genuinely changes the odds, and the live-dealer section covers the tables where a person deals the cards.