TAKE ACTION: Need urgent help to keep Australian online poker. Deadline 21 July #AusFight4Poker
http://www.pokerasiapacific.com/elec...o...
Conclusion
The status quo for online poker in Australia is the best we can hope for after this election. There is almost no chance of legalisation and regulation of poker.
If, as is increasingly likely, the Liberal party wins the election, the outlook is grim. Their explicit, stated policy is to ban online poker. The Greens and Xenophon will not stop them in the Senate.
As such, I recommend you reduce your current online bankroll to the bare minimum. As a general common sense measure, you should not have huge amounts online if you are an Australian player in any case.
Chances are you have a few more weeks to play online poker in Australia, a few months if the Coalition is slow to act on their new policy. Enjoy it while you can.
*MOD EDIT* - New info below was provided by JoeyDel on July 6, 2017.
The Australian online poker community has been fighting a huge battle to keep online poker in Australia for the past 8 months.
Their hard work has yielded some benefit. The government has agreed to hold a Senate Inquiry into the future of the game. If we are not successful it will no longer be legal to offer poker services in Australia which will lead to many reputable sites pulling out of the market.
We need to show the government that our voices matter and that we won't be ignored. We need AS MANY people as possible to make a submission to the inquiry telling the government online poker is too important for us to lose.
It won't take long but YOU can make all the difference. If YOU are reading this than YOU need to say something. If you leave it to somebody else it might be too late.
Make no mistake this isn't a maybe, this isn't a hypothetical and this isn't a conspiracy theory. If we can not make this committee see the benefits of our game then online poker will no longer legally allowed to be offered in Australia.
What do I need to do?
1) Head to this page to see the terms of reference for the inquiry and guidelines as to what you need to do to have your voice heard.
2) Head to the Australian Online Poker Alliance website. The AOPA has been leading our campaign so far. Head to their website for assistance on what sort of things you should be saying and for data and stats to help support your case.
3) Like the Australian Online Poker Alliance Faceboo.... This is the key marshaling point for the campaign and where directions of daily action plans are shared.
4) WRITE YOUR SUBMISSION! This is the most important thing you can do and the most positive benefit you can give to the Australian Poker Community.
Key things to consider.
1) Make sure your answers relate to the submission terms of reference. You may find it easier just to put the terms of reference as a heading and then to write your feelings about that. If you are more comfortable using dot points then do that.
2) Remember, this isn't an English test so if you are worried that you may not be a good writer, don't worry about it. They will do there best to read through and understand your point so don't be afraid about that. Making your point poorly is far more powerful than not making it at all.
The above being said, do your best. Make it neat, use spell/grammar check to make it the best you possibly can.
3) Speak about you. There are some general points on the AOPA website, don't copy these, use them to stir your thoughts. If everyone goes and writes the exact same thing then there isn't a whole lot of point.
At the end of the day you are an expert on YOU. You know how you feel and what it is about poker you love and the benefits it brings to your life. A submission requires real people, not 2,000 copies of the same talking points. Definitely touch on general points but bring things back to your personal experiences and humanise your submission as much as you can. Poker isn't just something for lawmakers to say yes or no to. It is a way of life for tens of thousands of Australians. We need to make sure they understand that.
3) Don't get too hung up on saying you are a winner and you are a great player etc. If every single person writes in saying they are a superstar we look quite delusional which has a damaging effect on our overall argument. Sure if you are James Obst, or Jarred Graham or MonsterDong or some other crusher you can talk about the professional aspect of it.
However, the main key to our argument is that this is a hobby enjoyed by everyday Australians who live everyday lives. The more we can keep it on the hobby/fun sense the better.
Submissions need to be in by the 21st of July but I would suggest we all aim to have them done by the 14th of July because things happen.
Start sharing your thoughts on below and let's start writing these things and sending them out!
The ball is in our court. Do you want to look back and think you could have done more to save the game you love or are you prepared to do whatever you can to keep online poker in Australia.
Take action. The time is now!
16 Replies
Hey guys, been 11 years roughly since the 1st post, been nearly a year since the last post, it’s scoop time again- so I’ll ask- any update etc?
I’m off to lex live in July sad to see I can’t get onto to stars to grind sattys etc to make the trip cheaper
No update I'm aware of. With the state of iggy/acr i think a better argument could be made for ring fencing Australian market and protecting players but I wouldn't even begin to know where to start.
No update I'm aware of. With the state of iggy/acr i think a better argument could be made for ring fencing Australian market and protecting players but I wouldn't even begin to know where to start.
As an Australian I am all for it but equally powerless.
I've heard about how soft those ring fenced sites often are and I would be extremely pleased with that outcome.
I would love a player pool that is more bogans than Botfarm.
Unfortunately I missed the juicy games on Iggy and only got into poker around the time the site started to lose reputation and regs.
A regulated Australia only site would probably be a goldmine. We've got a relatively small population but they sure do like to gamble. If just a tiny fraction of the money sunk into horses, football and slot machines makes it to the poker economy then it would be booming.
Who cares at this point honestly. You can get more than enough volume on unregulated sites and it’s easy to get on GG. The fact we can play ignition without having to jump through hoops puts us in a better spot than many people who can play on regulated sites but can’t access Iggy imo
A regulated fenced option would be awesome though
None of the current options are very good imo
Think the ringed fence with Australian licensing would be great for Aus players, but with how bookmakers are taxed (POCT being the main one) and the regulations they have to abide i can't see how a foreign site would be interested in going though the licensing procedures to obtain one
I am not sure of the exact rulings but licenses are available for poker sites to purchase and enter the market. From my understanding the fees/taxes are negotiable on per site bases.
My sources are friends who were interested in entering the market in some way and were going through the legals, got pretty far but never went ahead with it. The bottleneck is that the government will only really work with established brands or proof of work / established companies. Why brands haven't really tried to get a license is unknown, I am sure many of the largest sportsbooks could easily offer poker as an option if they wanted but it would be extremely small amount of revenue relative.
I think the probability of anything returning is very low. The only possibility that I can think of is to gather donations and setup a hail mary marketing campaign to try to get traction and to artificially inflate demand/hype for poker to return in a legal regulated way (ring fenced or not is irrelevant). If a company thinks its a competitor edge to offer poker as some type of backdoor to convert punters to their sportsbook (which is a current strategy american sites are using) then they have the resources to make it a reality.
Well maybe there is hope? PokerNews reported overnight that the world poker federation (WPF) aided by pokerstars was able to get poker officially recognised as a mind sport (like chess or esports). The International Mind Sport association (IMSA) passed this on the 18/11/24- so now that poker Officially is a “sport” what can the government really do to prevent sites from offering us a platform to play a sport? - they wouldn’t ban chess . Com ?? Fortnite etc? Surely this is a massive positive moving forward
I wonder if an email to stars is worth it following this news
they might ban chess . com if people start losing lots of money there (which is the case in poker and governments feel these people need to be protected)
they might ban chess . com if people start losing lots of money there (which is the case in poker and governments feel these people need to be protected)
Ban football because it turns some fans into racist, bigoted, sexist and homophobic knobheads. The logic the governments use to target this stuff makes no sense because most of what we do is harmful if interacted with in the wrong way.
I understand that governments sometimes do crazy things like these because people put pressure on them to do so, and therefore they want to show their work and be elected, as a defender of good morals or something.
Or they've had bad personal experiences themselves such as losing a bet lol
I understand that governments sometimes do crazy things like these because people put pressure on them to do so, and therefore they want to show their work and be elected, as a defender of good morals or something.
Or they've had bad personal experiences themselves such as losing a bet lol
True, the **** only hit the fan where I am when sports stars were affected and now we all get smeared. It's funny because it is the sports they played in that advertised the god damn thing.
Yeah the difference is the gambling part, not the sporting aspect. The problem being that any provider would still have to apply for a license and no poker operator have ever been granted one previously.
I doubt labor have the political capital to do it, and am not sure the liberal party would allow it either but it would be more likely to happen under a liberal government than labor. I am still very very doubtful it happens any time soon.
Labor party are wanting to regulate social media (please don't mistake us for a communist country but that is what is happening we will all have to prove our identity to access platforms like Facebook and X) - that is it for any chance of online poker coming back.
Just to be clear it's bipartisan legislation the awful social media ban bill, Dutton and the LNP support it too and both major parties deserve our scorn for supporting this nanny state nonsense
Everyone is playing on a certain largest poker site in the world anyway and the apps and so on so it's not like the legislation has stopped people from playing online if they want to they've just made it more annoying.
Just to be clear it's bipartisan legislation the awful social media ban bill, Dutton and the LNP support it too and both major parties deserve our scorn for supporting this nanny state nonsense
Everyone is playing on a certain largest poker site in the world anyway and the apps and so on so it's not like the legislation has stopped people from playing online if they want to they've just made it more annoying.
That is just the family first/Christian lobby side and me tooing of the liberals. There is a big thing in politics ATM of small target politics which is to try to be bi-partisan on big issues where you can to nullify any political mileage and hammer home the areas where you will get mileage from - so economy and immigration (housing crisis)
