It’s about this time of year that Brazil comes alive for Carnival. Anyone who has been to Sao Paulo, for example, will tell you that the country’s largest city is always alive, starting the moment you touch down at Cumbica Airport which, with the arrival of each jumbo full of tourists, bustles with people on their way to somewhere fun. 

But it’s even more vibrant come Carnival, which rattles the city’s streets with waves of Sambódromo.

It’s not just the Samba Schools Parade that is rocking this month. The poker world too is feeling this wave of excitement, it being a time of monumental change for the country’s poker players, who earlier this month woke up to find their beloved game had been officially recognised as a sport by the Brazilian Sports Ministry, thanks to the efforts of the Confederação Brasileira de Texas Hold'em (CBTH).

It’s the kind of headline dreamed of by players in countries where the doors of poker rooms, particular those online, remain bolted shut, their tables mothballed until some future day of political enlightenment.

“Poker is a competitive discipline, which requires the participant to have intelligence, ability, and intellectual and behavioural skills in order to succeed,” said the statement published on the Sports Ministry’s website. “The CBTH represents the most extended definition of poker, Texas Hold’em and all the other variants of this game…”

So while outside the streets of Sao Paulo will dance to the carnival tune in the coming days, inside the Sheraton Hotel hundreds will play the Grand Final Carnival Poker Festival of the PokerStars Latin American Poker Tour, which kicks off today and couldn’t have been better timed. Read more about the tournament, and no doubt splashes of colour from beyond, on the PokerStars Blog.