Latvia

GETTING THERE

Cheap flights to Riga are readily available from airports
across the UK. You can usually pick up a ticket for under £200, though
Ryanair offers tickets from as little as £26, with flights from East
Midlands, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow and Stansted. For the
carbonconscious, train travel is also possible via Brussels, Berlin and
Warsaw.

GETTING AROUND

Assuming you stay somewhere central, getting around Riga
is best done on foot. The casino is only ten minutes walk from the
centre, and the entire Old Town is pedestrianised. If you need to go
further afield, taxis are cheap and readily available, or there’s a
pretty decent public transport system including trams, buses and
trolleybuses.

OLYMPIC VOODOO CASINO

With its fake tropical foliage, artificial rocks
and floor-to-ceiling tribal masks, Riga’s Voodoo Casino is a
questionable exercise in interior design, but it’s also the premier
poker venue in Latvia. Sadly, most of the ‘poker’ tables at the Voodoo
are devoted to rubbish casino variants like 3-card poker and ‘Casino
Hold’em’ (played against the house). Proper cash games do take place,
but the real reason you’d come here is for the tournaments.

The Voodoo
plays host to one or two small tourneys a month, mostly no-limit
hold’em freezeouts (€72 buy-in), plus the odd pot-limit Omaha rebuy.
For bigger action, the casino hosts several big festivals every year.
In May there’s the Olympic Open Championship, while November sees the
Latvian leg of the Anniversary Tour – both of which boast a €1,050 main
event. There’s also the Summer Festival, for which see right…

SUMMER FESTIVAL

2008 The Olympic Summer Festival (11-17 August) is the
newest addition to Riga’s poker calendar. The series didn’t draw much
of a crowd last year, with just 30 runners entering the €730 main
event, but this year promises to be more lively. Side events include a
¤110 PLO rebuy and a €220 NLH freezeout, while the main event is a
two-day €750 hold’em affair. Englishman Steve Jelinek took the €6,915
first prize in 2007, so there’s a good precedent to follow if you fancy
the trip.

EAT, SLEEP, DRINK RIGA

Travellers to Riga generally head straight for
the picturesque Old Town (Vecriga in Latvian), where most of
restaurants, hotels and bars are found. There’s no shortage of dining
options (Riga is the most cosmopolitan of the Baltic cities), though a
recent boom in sushi restaurants suggests they’re still playing
catch-up.

However, prices are excellent – about half UK prices in many
places. To sample the hearty local fare, try the tourist-friendly Café
Grill Bar or charming cellar restaurant Vecmeita Ar Kaki. For
international dining, head for Bestsellers in the Albert Hotel or the
very posh Vincents. As for accommodation, if you want to be right in
the action, the 27-storey Reval Hotel is the home of the Olympic Casino
and a reasonable option at about £100 a night.

Even if you don’t stay,
drop in at the Skyline Bar on the top floor – a great spot from which
to survey the Old Town. For a quieter, more boutique affair, try the
elegant Hotel Bergs just down the road from the Reval.