Poker in Cambodia

Where you can play poker in Cambodia

Poker in Cambodia lives inside licensed casinos. Any poker game held outside a licensed commercial casino is illegal, and playing in one can mean fines or imprisonment, so the licensed rooms are the whole story for a visitor³. The good news is that the licensed rooms are genuinely good ones.

The country's casinos are concentrated in Phnom Penh, Banteay Meanchey (the Poipet border area), Svay Rieng, Kampot, Pailin and Preah Sihanouk provinces, so those are the provinces where you will find cards⁵. In practice, poker players have two real destinations:

• Phnom Penh, for the NagaWorld Poker Room and the ARENA Sports Poker Bar, both inside the NagaWorld complex. This is the deepest and most reliable action in the country.
• Poipet, on the Thai border, for Sands Poker Club and the casino cluster around it. Poipet's casinos are allowed to operate legally and cater mainly to Thais who cross the border at weekends, along with visitors from China, South Korea and Malaysia⁶.

Sihanoukville has plenty of casinos but no established dedicated poker room to speak of; if you are on the coast, the reliable poker action is in the capital. For the wider casino picture, see our guides to casinos in Cambodia, casinos in Phnom Penh, casinos in Poipet and casinos in Sihanoukville.

On who can sit down: foreign passport holders can play legally from age 18³. Cambodian citizens cannot gamble at all, poker included, and the casinos check identity at the door to keep them out³. Hold'em, Omaha and Caribbean Stud are the three most popular poker variations you will encounter across the country's venues⁷.

NagaWorld Poker Room: Phnom Penh's main venue

NagaWorld is Cambodia's largest gaming and entertainment complex and Phnom Penh's only integrated hotel-casino, sitting right in the heart of the capital, adjacent to key attractions and the bustling riverfront area⁸. It is also the country's only top-tier luxury casino and one of its largest five-star hotels, with over 1,658 rooms and suites if you want to stay on site¹⁰.

The poker itself happens in a dedicated 8-table Poker Room on Level 1 of NagaWorld 1, with action running 24/7¹. That table count tells you the scale of the scene: this is a compact, social room rather than a vast card city, but it is the most consistent poker action in Cambodia, with 8 games running nightly¹.

Beyond the poker room, the complex offers the full casino spread: baccarat dominates as it does everywhere in Cambodia, alongside blackjack, roulette, Sic Bo and several poker variants on the main floor. For the full picture of the venue, see our NagaWorld guide, and for the city's other options, casinos in Phnom Penh.

Cash games at NagaWorld: stakes, variants and rake

This is where NagaWorld earns its reputation among regional grinders. Action-filled games run around the clock, with low to mid-range no-limit games at 1/3 and 2/5, and on most evenings one 5/10+ no-limit game². So whether you want a casual evening at 1/3 or a bigger game, the room usually has you covered, day or night.

The room offers the following variants.

"On demand" means the room will open a PLO or Short Deck table if enough interested players ask, so it is worth putting your name down with the floor rather than assuming those games will be running when you arrive.

On cost: NagaWorld boasts the lowest rake in Cambodia and one of the most competitive rake structures in all of Southeast Asia². For a cash-game player, that matters more than almost anything else on this page, since rake is the price you pay on every pot.

ARENA Sports Poker Bar: 8 tables, 24 hours a day

The ARENA Sports Poker Bar is the second poker spot inside the NagaWorld complex, located on Level 1 of NagaWorld¹¹. It is a different animal from the formal Poker Room: a sports bar with poker attached, and it works very well if you want to watch a match while you play.

The essentials:

• 8 poker tables, with 8 games running nightly¹¹
• Open 24 hours, so the late-night crowd always has a table¹¹
• Cash stakes from 1/3 no-limit up to 20/40 no-limit, a wider top end than the main Poker Room's usual spread¹¹
• Weekly tournaments on Saturday and Sunday¹¹
• Sports viewing: a 4-meter LED display plus 20 televisions of 55 and 65 inches showing live sport, and self-service betting terminals where you can bet on up to 100 matches a day¹¹

The ARENA is also billed as the only legal sports betting venue in Cambodia, which makes it the one place in the country where poker tables and legal sports wagering sit in the same room¹¹. Cash-game tables here run 24/7¹². If sports betting is your thing, our sports betting in Cambodia page covers the wider picture.

Sands Poker Club in Poipet

If you are near the Thai border rather than the capital, Sands Poker Club in Poipet is the other dedicated poker venue in the country¹³. It specializes in Texas Hold'em with games for every level of player, run by experienced professional dealers¹³.

The stakes run from casual 20/40 games up to high-stakes 100/200 tables, so this is actually the place for the biggest buy-in poker in Cambodia if the high-stakes tables are running¹³. Every buy-in also enters you into the club's Lucky Draw for prizes¹³.

Poipet itself is a border town whose casinos are allowed to operate legally and draw thousands of Thais crossing at weekends, plus visitors from China, South Korea and Malaysia⁶. The poker crowd at Sands reflects that mix. For the town's other gaming options, see casinos in Poipet.

Tournaments and festival poker

NagaWorld is home to weekly low-stakes tournaments and also serves as host for international poker festivals throughout the year in partnership with global brands¹⁴. So the tournament scene runs from a cheap weekly game you can sit into on a whim up to full-scale festival poker with international fields when a tour comes to town.

How the tournaments work, in brief: all players pay an entry fee and buy-in before the start, which gets you your starting chips and your seat. The blinds rise at set intervals, an ante often appears in later rounds, and the winner is the player who ends up holding all the chips. One nice feature of tournaments is that you always know the prize pool in advance, and runners-up usually get paid too, not just the champion. At the final table, players sometimes cut a deal to split the money when the gap between first and fifth prize is large¹⁵.

For the full picture of schedules, buy-ins and the international festivals that pass through, see our dedicated page on poker tournaments in Cambodia.

Online poker in Cambodia

Online poker is a different matter from the live game: the online poker landscape in Cambodia is strictly prohibited following a major policy shift, and the country has no regulated online casinos or poker sites, not only for residents but for anyone who finds themselves in Cambodia⁴. In 2019 the Prime Minister formally banned all online gambling and stopped issuing licenses, and that ban still stands⁴.

Some people in Cambodia use offshore sites licensed in places like Panama, Anjouan, Mwali, Curaçao, the Isle of Man or Malta. That can constitute illegal gambling, though authorities rarely bother prosecuting locals for it, and enforcement against players is uneven⁴. The practical point for a visitor is simple: there is no legal online poker option from inside Cambodia, and the live rooms are where the legal action is.

We cover the online side in detail, including what the ban means and what the risks look like, on our online poker in Cambodia page, and the broader offshore picture on online gambling in Cambodia page.

Currencies and payments: USD for live games

All live poker games in Cambodia are played in US dollars, which is the main currency used for transactions in the country anyway³. Bring cash in USD for buy-ins; the riel is unlikely to be accepted at the tables, and certainly not online.

For the wider picture of moving money, cards, cash and crypto in the country, see our gambling payments in Cambodia guide.

First visit checklist

A few practical notes for your first session:

• Bring your passport. Foreigners play from age 18, and the venue checks identity at the door, partly to keep Cambodian citizens out, since gambling is illegal for them³.
• Bring USD cash. All games are in dollars, so arrive with the buy-in you want in cash³.
• Start at 1/3 or 2/5. These run around the clock at NagaWorld, so you will not wait long for a seat².
• Ask about PLO and Short Deck. Those games run on demand, so put your name in with the floor early².
• Pick your room by mood. The formal Poker Room for pure poker, the ARENA Sports Poker Bar if you want sport on the screens and stakes up to 20/40¹¹.
• Weekend tournament players should look at the ARENA's Saturday and Sunday events, or the weekly low-stakes tournaments in the main room¹¹.
• Border travelers can find hold'em up to 100/200 at Sands Poker Club in Poipet¹³.

For the country's gambling rules in general, see gambling in Cambodia, and for the legal detail, gambling laws in Cambodia.