Poker In Tokyo - Where To Play
By billywest • May 21st, 2008 • Category: Entertainment
The World Series Of Poker is coming up soon in Las Vegas. Players from all over the world will gather in the poker mecca and try to become part of poker history. A few Japanese players will be among them. I, myself planned to participate in one or two events this year, but fell a little short of the my buy-in savings goal. Oh, well… Maybe next year.
While poker has become unbelievably popular all over the world, it doesn’t enjoy much of a following in Japan. Sure, among foreigners and Japanese alike, there are weekly home games all over the country; There are even Japan poker social networks that can be easily found online. The trouble is, gambling is illegal in Japan. Get caught playing in your co-worker’s buddy’s weekly ￥100/200 no-limit Hold ‘Em game and you’re likely to find yourself deported after a few weeks in jail. If you find yourself in an undergroud casino, and the place gets raided, you’ll probably do time. Think I’m exaggerating? Not a chance; combatting illegal gambling is taken very seriously here and lots of poor bastards (Japanese and foreigners alike) have found themselves in prison for just wanting to gamble it up here in J-land.
So, how do I get into a good game, you ask? Well, other than doing the illegal home game thing, there’s not much you can do if your’re into cash games or cash tournaments. Governor Ishihara proposed opening up a casino in Odaiba a few years back, but that plan hasn’t gone anywhere. Of course, a plane ride to Korea or Macau will get you into a cash game, but, well…
Anyway, back to reality. You can play in poker tournaments, legally, in the Tokyo area. Sometimes, there are even nice prizes awarded to the winners. These tourneys are usually held in popular bars in areas like Shibuya or Roppongi and the atmosphere at these events can be quite exciting. Great! Where do I sign up, you ask? Well, you can check out the home page of the Japan Poker League (JPL) for information on events, times, and places. As far as I know, other than JPL, there isn’t anybody running tournaments at clubs and bars in Tokyo on a regular basis. The Japan Poker Players Association holds weekly tournaments at their shop called The Ueno Room, in Ueno, but these aren’t lively events at all; They’re mostly for the benefit of Tokyo poker otaku.
At both JPL and JPPA events, the dealers and staff are very friendly and they don’t mind foreigners playing at all; In fact many of them fly to Vegas every year and participate in the WSOP. At both JPL and JPPA events, English poker terms only are used, so you won’t have to worry about learning Japanese ones.
How the tournaments work
Players pay a fee (usually ￥2000, with a drink included) and play until there’s one person left. That person wins the tourney. Just like back home, right? Well, except for the fact that you don’t really get anything for winning, sure, I guess. I shouldn’t say the winners don’t get anything; they get a cheesy prize like a T-shirt or mousepad or something. They also get points which, when accumulated in abundance after several tourneys, allow them to play in bigger tournaments where the prizes sometimes include buy-ins to major PokerStars tournaments in other countries. I played in one of these tourneys last year and saw a woman who barely knew the game win herself a buy-in to a PokerStars tourney in Manila where players like Daniel Negreanu were featured.
The major flaw with these tourneys is that unlimited re-buys are usually allowed for the first hour, which means drunken salarymen with deep pockets can go all-in on every hand without fear of elimination. If it were usually just one of these boneheads each time you had pocket rockets, you’d welcome this sort of behavior, right? But, it’s quite often 4 - 5 of them every hand so it becomes too risky for those who just want to buy in one time and last it out until the end. This is why the JPL has been successful so far; They take a lot of buy-in and re-buy money off the customers, but they don’t offer much in the way of prizes.
Well, if you’re still interested in getting in on one of these tournaments after having read the above paragraph, you can get more information by checking out these sites (sorry, Japanese language only):
Japan Poker Players Association - JPPA
If you know of any other poker events happening in Tokyo or other parts of Japan, let me know in the comments section below.
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billywest is a resident of South Tokyo and lives on the Toyoko line.
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I’m not a big poker player, but like any good strategist it’s always good to be able to read other people. I’ll probably check it out to see if i can see any tell signs.
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Your descriptions of the JPL and JPPA are about right, but one thing you might want to mention is that the JPL games accrue points towards a championship game which awards a seat and expenses to an APPT event, which I believe is worth several thousand dollars, so while you may not see anything in terms of prizes at the end of the evening, they do give out some significant prizes over the course of a year.
The superfast structures and rapid rebuys still suck, though.
There is also the Japan Poker Enterprise Association, which is a different collection of bars running poker games and tournaments. They have better structures than the JPL games, and generally have a laid back, lets-have-some-fun attitude that I prefer. They also award points towards larger games with larger prizes a few times a year, but they also also coupons or tokens as prizes for winning each game, and those are good for food or drink credit at the bar running the game, so are actually useful.
Take a look at http://www.pokernavi.jp for an overview and a listing of most of the games they run. They have some south-Tokyo games, too… are you anywhere near Kamata?
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Yeah, I’m pretty close to Kamata. Think I’ll look at getting into a JPEA tourney this summer. Thanks for the
extra info, James.
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Great post ! Makes me want to try to join a game while in Tokyo this summer
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You should; The atmosphere at the tournaments I’ve participated in was always fun.
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I can’t read the japanese poker league website. Where and when can we play poker in tokyo ??
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The times and venues change daily, but if you give me a date or small set of dates on which you’re looking at playing,
I’ll let you know. Can’t help with more than a week’s notice, though.
The unlimited rebuy thingy and the way you presented it is not convincing me JPL tournaments are the thing.
But what about internet poker? I know it’s not as good … but you know as a temporary palliative for “real poker”.
Here in Italy they blocked the internet casinos and most internet poker rooms - actually you just have to bypass the italian central DNS server to unblock. This way they had all the internet companies paying huge bribes to the AAMS (the italian bureau for organized gamble) to be unlocked.
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Do you know of any cash games in Tokyo? I’d love to do a tournament and cash game at a bar like i do in Shanghai and was wondering if they have any bars that host that kind of thing. Im here till this saturday so would appreciate any help.
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Len,
No, no cash games, and no tournaments for cash prizes. Those would be illegal.
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