Mapping east German poker: one Friday in Cottbus, and nothing dealt in Saxony

A gap on the German poker map has now been measured rather than assumed. Reading each operator's own site on 7 October 2026 - no aggregators, no directories - produced a plain answer for two eastern states.

Saxony has three state casinos and none of them deals poker. The Sächsische Spielbanken houses in Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz all advertise poker, which is how the confusion starts, but each page puts the word next to bingo and electronic roulette: Leipzig lists more than 140 slot machines and electronic roulette over roughly 700 square metres with electronic versions of poker and roulette, Dresden more than 90 machines over 400 square metres on the same basis, and Chemnitz more than 80 machines with slots, bingo, poker and roulette available at numerous stations. Stations, not tables. No croupier deals a hand in Saxony, there is no cash game and there is no tournament calendar in any of the three.

Brandenburg splits. The Potsdam casino, in the city's historic centre opposite the Filmmuseum, publishes a live offer of two roulette tables from 18:00 and one blackjack table from 19:00 alongside around 100 machines, and poker appears nowhere in its game menu. Cottbus is the exception, and it is a real one. A No Limit Hold'em tournament runs every Friday at 19:30 with the field capped at 27 players, rotating through three formats: a €90 freeze-out with 20,000 chips on the first Friday of the month, a €110 half-bounty event on the second - €50 to the prize pool, €50 on each player's head, one re-entry to the end of level 3 - and a €30 rebuy tournament with 5,000 chips on the remaining Fridays, where a short stack can take €20 rebuys until level 3 ends and then a single €30 add-on. Every buy-in quoted includes a €10 house fee, it has to be with the floorman ten minutes before the start or the reservation lapses, and it is paid in chips bought at the machine cashier. As soon as the first tournament table breaks the room opens a €2/€2 cash game, dealt as Hold'em but convertible to Dealer's Choice if the table agrees and the floor approves; on Saturday that cash game starts at 19:30 instead.

For a player east of Berlin, then, the honest summary is that Cottbus on a Friday night is the state-casino option, and the €30 rebuy is the one that runs most weeks. The pattern also repeats a lesson that keeps catching people out in German casino listings: a game menu that says Poker is not evidence of a poker room. In North Rhine-Westphalia three of the five MERKUR houses - Duisburg, Monheim and Hohensyburg's daily table - advertise poker that is Heads-Up Hold'em played against the bank, a house-banked table game rather than a pot contested between players. Only the cash games at Aachen, Bad Oeynhausen and Hohensyburg's Monday-to-Thursday session are player-versus-player there.

These figures are what the operators published on 7 October 2026 and casinos change schedules without notice; check the house before travelling.