Poker in German casinos: which Spielbanken actually deal it

Germany has more casinos than almost anywhere in Europe and far fewer poker rooms than that number suggests. Roughly half the houses that print the word Poker in their game offer deal a dealer-banked table game or an electronic one, where each guest plays alone against the house and there is no pot. We read each house's own game list, one page at a time, and record what it actually spreads - including the houses that spread nothing, because a verified no is what saves a wasted trip.

How the German map breaks down

Germany has no national casino operator. Each federal state licenses its own, so the poker map is really fifteen separate maps, and the differences between them are large.

The strongest regions are **Hesse** (Wiesbaden, with five to eight tables seven days a week and the cheapest published fee in the country), **North Rhine-Westphalia** (the MERKUR houses, with Aachen dealing daily across up to seven tables and Hohensyburg running the biggest published stakes), **Berlin**, **Hamburg**, **Lower Saxony** (four of ten MERKUR houses deal cards, including the country's only scheduled Seven Card Stud game at Bad Zwischenahn), **Bavaria** (nine state houses, all with ranking tournaments) and **Baden-Wuerttemberg** (Baden-Baden, Stuttgart, Konstanz).

The **Saarland** is a small but real two-house scene: Saarbruecken deals a 2/4 cash game every day from 18:00, and Neunkirchen deals on its tournament days, Tuesday and Friday.

At the other end, **Saxony-Anhalt** publishes house-banked poker only, **Rhineland-Palatinate's** Bad Neuenahr lists no poker of any kind, and **Bremen's** state house is shut for refurbishment while its Bremerhaven stand-in offers machine games only - the Poker on that game list is one of ninety machine positions.

The three things worth checking before you travel

**Is it player-versus-player?** Heads-Up Hold'em, Bavarian Texas Hold'em, three-card variants and electronic poker terminals all appear under the single word Poker. None of them is a card game against other players.

**Is the poker offer where you would look for it?** German Spielbanken routinely publish the game list under a page about the house itself rather than a poker section. A missing poker page is not evidence that a house stopped dealing, and we never conclude it from a homepage alone.

**What is the Taxe?** German houses charge a flat, pot-size-staggered fee per hand instead of a percentage rake, and the table varies sharply between houses at the same blinds. It is the single biggest difference between two rooms that otherwise look identical.

Age, entry and identification

German Spielbanken admit adults from 18 and require photo identification at the door. **Lower Saxony is the exception a visitor actually trips over: its minimum age is 21.** Entry is free at most houses, dress codes vary by state, and the nationwide OASIS self-exclusion register applies at the door of every licensed house.

Every venue record below carries the page we read it from and the date we read it. Schedules change without announcement, so each one goes back into a re-check queue. This is general information, not legal advice.