Three countries, no market: how Japan, Mexico and Argentina produce champions anyway
None of the three has a functioning domestic online poker market — Japan bans gambling outright, Mexico runs online as an annex to 1947-era permits, Argentina licenses province by province. Between them they have produced a $30m world top-40 player, a $12m bracelet winner and a run of WSOP titles. We read their all-time money lists.
We spent this week reading three national money lists on the Hendon Mob — Japan, Mexico and Argentina — and publishing the players behind them. What stands out is not any single result but the pattern: all three countries produce serious champions, and none of them has anywhere at home for those champions to have been made.
**Japan** prohibits gambling under Chapter 23 of its Penal Code, with narrow exceptions for public sports betting and the lottery. Poker is played in amusement clubs where chips cannot be cashed. And yet Masashi Oya has $10,308,942 and a WSOP Paradise bracelet worth $2,940,000; Daisuke Ogita won the WSOP Mini Main Event in Las Vegas in June 2026 for exactly $1,000,000; Naoya Kihara has been winning bracelets since 2012. Masato Yokosawa, meanwhile, is the seventh most-viewed player profile in the world — a country that watches far more poker than it is allowed to play.
**Mexico** has no standalone online licence at all. Operators reach players through Article 85 of the 2004 regulation, bolted onto land-based permits issued under a 1947 prohibition statute, most of which run to 2038. The federal gaming tax rose from 30% to 50% on 1 January 2026. Luis Velador still has two WSOP bracelets and a tenth place in the 2014 Main Event; Tomas Szwarcberg took $360,000 for 21st in 2025.
**Argentina** has twenty-four jurisdictions and no national law. Roughly fifteen license online gaming, led by LOTBA in the City of Buenos Aires and IPLyC in the province, and none of the frameworks was built around poker. Argentina nevertheless has the highest-placed player of the three by a distance: Jose Ignacio 'Nacho' Barbero is 40th in the world with $30,295,016, and still lives in Buenos Aires rather than relocating. Alejandro Lococo — the rapper Papo MC — won the $500,000 Triton Million at WSOP Paradise in December 2024 for $12,070,000, the biggest single cash any Argentine has taken.
The common thread is travel. Taipei, Manila and Macau for the Japanese; Las Vegas and the border for the Mexicans; Medellín, São Paulo and Europe for the Argentines. Where a domestic market does not exist, the players go to where the money is dealt — which is worth remembering the next time someone argues that regulation creates poker players. It mostly decides where they have to fly to.
The player pages, earnings and best cashes behind this piece are now live for all three countries.