Bulgaria has been the last European country to legalize online gambling, and is starting to grant licenses to the first operators. As today, some of them already got the license, for instance PokerStars.

For the online gambling operators, Bulgaria is a very interesting market, since it is very passionate to gambling and specially poker. And one of the best poker players, Dimitar Danchev, is actually from Bulgaria. He won the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure last year in 2013.

So far, the Bulgarian State Gambling Commission (SGC) has declared that this is just a testing period, and they want to check how the situation will evolve. The gambling industries have been pushing for quite some time in order to get licenses, and now that the first ones have been given, they want to start operating as soon as possible. However, it will take some time until Bulgarian society realize that the market has started to open. During some time, they will probably think they are playing illegally, until the situation is clarified.

Actually, most of the online gambling operators are still blacklisted, although the authorities have promised they will solve this situation soon.

Bulgarian government aims with this new legislation changes to end with all forms of clandestine and criminal gambling, which has been increasing in the past years considerably, to become a security issue for police and armed forces. Fighting against these mafias was a priority, and this will hit them badly, government expects.

So, if you are from Bulgaria, it’s just a matter of time that you will be able to play poker freely in your favorite online poker rooms. And if you are from some other country that still hasn’t open the market, we expect this gives you hopes and soon one day you will be able to play as well.