Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala has been a leading tourist destination for decades. Hailed as one of the most spectacular locations in Central America, this lake is in fact a collapsed volcanic cone filled with clear blue waters. Apart from its natural beauty and relaxed lakeside towns, the area offers its many visitors all the expected tourist attractions – kayak rentals, hiking, horseback riding, volcano climbing and the likes. But a closer look at the nightlife scene surrounding the lake reveals a new Guatemalan pastime that isn’t covered in your tourist guidebook – poker tournaments.

Texas Hold’em is taking over the world. If you need any proof of that, just take a look at ESPN’s spring lineup. The game is so popular that even developing countries such as Guatemala are getting caught up in the poker mix. Theoretically, that shouldn’t come as a surprise, since online poker can be played wherever there is an internet connection. Unfortunately, most people in Guatemala don’t have an internet connection in their own home. But they find ways to play poker nonetheless.

Luis, a Spanish teacher by day and a poker enthusiast by night, explains: “Until a few years ago, there was no such thing, ‘internet’. Only the expensive hotels had it, and we didn’t know what it was, so we didn’t care. Now, we still don’t have (internet) in our house, but there is an internet café on every corner. My children go to the internet place almost every day after school, to chat or play the video games. After they go to sleep, I go there sometimes too, to play poker online.”

Luis started playing Hold’em way before he was introduced to the internet. “My father lived in Mexico during the war (i.e. the Guatemalan Civil War), and he learned to play poker there”, says Luis. “When I was young, he would play with me all the time, until he stopped because I got better than him”, he jokes. “But my boys aren’t interested. They only like games with cars and guns. My wife doesn’t like (the fact) that I play poker either”, Luis goes on. “Once, I won more than my whole month’s salary playing online for 3 hours, but when she found out how much I was betting she wouldn’t have it. Now I’m only allowed to play the low-stakes limit tables, so I don’t make as much."

But internet cafes are not the only answer. Another solution to the lack of regular internet access is live poker games. ‘The Barrio’, a popular bar in the lakeside town of San Pedro La Laguna, hosts such games every night of the week. Katya, an Austrian tourist who fell in love with the town over a year ago and has been bartending at The Barrio ever since, explains how it works: “The game is No-Limit Texas Hold’em, and starts every night at 8 PM or when we get enough players. The buy-in is only 20 Quetzals (Guatemalan currency) per person, which is less than $3 US, because we want the game to be accessible to backpackers as well as locals. On the other hand, you can keep buying in as many times as you want, so some of the pots get quite big."

“When we first started with the poker games”, Katya recalls, “we would get enough players only on the weekends. Now so many people show up that we sometimes have too many players and not enough tables to fit them all. Plus, there are so many poker games and tournaments in town, it’s just amazing.”

Katya summed it all up with a sentence that would ring true no matter what country it was said in: “Tourist, locals, guys, girls, young and old – everyone wants a seat next to the poker table.”

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