India’s poker industry continues to grow with a new poker club coming up in the commercial city of Mumbai. A Pune-based company has opened a poker club in Mumbai, located on India’s west coast.
According to GLaws, the poker club will be managed by the New World of Sports Club Limited (NWOS). The company is co-founded by Pune-based businessmen Allen Bansode, Rishi Nagpal and Suraj Kusalkar.
According to GLaws, the company “claims to have secured the necessary permissions and licenses from the police for running a licensed card room for the skill-based game of poker in the city.”
The Mumbai poker club is a members’ only poker room and is situated in a 2,000-plus square feet location and has over six poker tables. The poker room conducts daily games and tournaments for its clients. Managed and run by the Poker Stuff India CEO Chetan Jain, it is quite legal and safe to play at the club, but all players need to apply for membership and must be accepted by the club. New members are often accepted through referrals only.
NWOS is not new to India’s poker industry and already runs a poker room in Koregaon Park in Pune. Up next, the company also plans to launch an online poker website to capitalize on the ever-growing online poker industry of India.
The news of a new poker club opening in India has come at a time when existing poker clubs are fighting a legal battle to clear the uncertainty over the legality of poker games in the country, especially in Gujarat.
Recently, the Indian Poker Association (IPA) filed a petition with Gujarat high court accusing that the state law enforcement agencies are breaking an IPA-hosted poker game at a local YMCA club in Ahmedabad. IPA and 6 other clubs, however, withdrew their original petitions and filed new ones to argue their contention “that poker is a game of skill” and get a quick verdict from the high court.