Poker in Uruguay: where it is dealt, the law and the online record

Uruguay is small, stable and unusually serious about poker. Punta del Este has hosted WSOP Circuit and Latin American tour stops for years, and the country's top player has won more online than most nations' entire live record. But the gambling estate and the poker estate are not the same thing, and the gap between them is bigger here than almost anywhere.

Where poker is actually dealt

Uruguay has a large state gambling estate and a very small poker footprint inside it. The Direccion General de Casinos divides its holdings into four casinos and 31 salas — 35 addresses in all — and across that whole estate only one, Casino Victoria Plaza in the Radisson in Montevideo, lists poker among its games at all. The 31 salas are slot and electronic-gaming halls; the other three state casinos list table games without poker.

Outside the state estate the picture is just as narrow. The Uruguayan live-poker calendar names three addresses as poker venues in the entire country: Enjoy Punta del Este Casino & Resort, Casino Carrasco in Montevideo, and Victoria Plaza. Everything that happens in Uruguayan tournament poker happens at those three, and in practice almost all of it happens at the first.

So a visitor should plan around Punta del Este rather than around Montevideo, and should not assume that a casino listed near them deals poker. One open question we have not been able to settle from a primary source: whether the two Texas Hold'em tables at Victoria Plaza are player-versus-player poker or a house-banked table game of the kind several South American and European casinos list under the same name. Until that is verified from the venue itself, treat it as unconfirmed.

The December festival is the season

The Gran Final Millonaria closes the Enjoy Poker Tour year at Enjoy Punta del Este, and the 2026 edition runs from 3 to 9 December with 27 numbered tournaments and USD 1,500,000 announced across the schedule. The Final Millonaria main event has a published entry of USD 2,750 and USD 750,000 guaranteed, played over five Day 1 flights with the final on 9 December. Above it sit a USD 3,300 High Roller and a USD 5,500 Super High Roller; below it a USD 660 one-day Mini Main Event, two separate age-restricted Senior events, a Second Chance on main-event Day 2, three knockouts, two turbos and one pot-limit Omaha event. Thirteen of the 27 are satellites from USD 165 to USD 550.

Chilean and Argentine players travel for it, which is what gives the fields their size. Uruguay's other two domestic circuits, the Circuito Uruguayo de Poker and the Codere Poker Series, show no future dates on the national calendar, so for the moment the December week at Punta del Este is close to the whole live season.

The legal position

Gambling in Uruguay is state-controlled. Casinos are operated or licensed by the state — the Direccion General de Casinos runs the national casinos, and the municipal and resort casinos at Punta del Este operate under that framework. Online gambling has not been opened to private licensing in the way sports betting has in some neighbouring countries.

There is no Uruguayan licence for an international poker room to hold, so Uruguayans who play online do so on international sites. Nothing in Uruguayan law makes it an offence for an individual to play; the framework addresses operators. This is general information rather than legal advice, and it is a position that can change — regional regulation has moved quickly in the last few years.

The minimum gambling age is 18.

The online story

Francisco Benitez tops the national list with $3.7m live, but his profile also records $15,736,991 in online tournament winnings — one of the largest online records in the Americas. Fabrizio Gonzalez has built $3m across Florida, Nottingham and Monterrey.

That pattern, a small country with outsized online results, repeats across South America: where the domestic live circuit is thin, the serious money is made on a laptop. Poker is a game of skill played for entertainment, and results like these are the exception rather than a model to plan around.