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.