Bolivia's gambling regulator seized three poker tables in La Paz — in a country where poker is a licensed game

Bolivia's gambling regulator, the Autoridad de Fiscalización del Juego (AJ), announced on 5 September 2026 that it had intervened in a poker game running without authorisation in La Paz. Officers confiscated three poker tables along with chips and playing cards, and the regulator framed the operation as part of its continuing programme against unlicensed gambling, closing with an appeal for the public to report venues operating without authorisation.

What makes the case worth reading twice is that poker is not banned in Bolivia. The AJ's own published list of authorised games includes a card-games category covering Black Jack, Poker, Baccarat, Treinta y Cuarenta and Pozos Progresivos, with poker described as a hand of cards dealt individually and in common, won by the best combination under the rules of the variant being played. So the seizure was not about the game being illegal; it was about the operator not holding the Licencia de Operaciones the AJ issues.

That distinction is the whole shape of poker in Bolivia at the moment. The game is licensable, and the regulator's public record shows a steady run of enforcement — La Paz in September, slot machines seized in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in October, and earlier interventions logged in Cochabamba, Sucre, Potosí, Coroico and Uyuni — but no licensed room with a published poker schedule that we have been able to verify from a primary source. A player looking for a legal live game in Bolivia currently has nowhere specific to be pointed.

The AJ advises checking that an establishment holds the relevant authorisation before taking part, on the grounds that unlicensed machines and tables sit outside the supervision the licensed operators are held to, leaving players with no route to complain if something goes wrong. That is sensible advice anywhere, and in Bolivia it is currently the only advice that can be given with confidence.