Mark Kroon dreams about playing at the Full Tilt Poker Series tournament tonight. This poker tournament will be taking place during the weekend at the Torrelodones Casino. Kroon, 47, has traveled from Madison (Wisconsin) to face the others 231 poker players who have the same dream he has: to take home the $110.000 reserved for the winner. The buy-in costs $1.600, but 80 of the participants, such as Kroon, have qualified by internet with much lower amount.

‘I’ve played in about 150 tournaments like this, but it’s the first time I come to Spain’, says Kroon. After nine years playing poker and more than $2 millions, this poker professional plans to retire on 2015. But in the meanwhile he will try to win as many poker tournaments as he can.

Some years ago it was impossible to imagine such an important poker championship taking place at Spain. The big international explosion this cards game has experienced in the last decade has come a little late to that country, but now it’s really popular. David Luzago, tournament technical director, said: ‘poker game has evolved a lot. Its image isn’t totally clean, but it has taken a much more sporty aspect because of the competition systems’.

This poker explosion has had an effect at the internet too. In many countries, gambling and poker sites are at a legal limbo and that has benefited the spread and the Moneymaker effect. On February 2003, Chris Moneymaker signed up on a poker tournament which cost just $40 and whose final prize was a sit at the World Series, main poker championship on the world which takes place every year at Las Vegas.