Australian Warnings
There have been recent warnings that have been released to pubs and hotels of
Australia. Hotels and pubs need to become more aware of the rules and
regulations that they are facing if they are going to run a poker game at their
facilities. Unlike online casinos, the Australian Hotels Association has certain
legal issues that an online casino would never have to deal with which are the
fact that most land based poker playing is run illegally. The general manager of
the Australian Hotels Association, Ian Horne, raised the issue recently to his
land based casino the Adelaide Casino. He questioned the legality of the games
that are being run by the land based casino. All of the games that are being
conducted in a land based casino are often started for commercial reasons.
The laws state that free poker games at a pub are perfectly legal. Where it
starts to get tricky is when the venue offers a cash prize to the winner of the
poker tournament. There are a lot of online casino based poker franchises that
do not have land based tournaments in Australia for those reasons. Some
promoters of poker tournaments will do anything to have a popular pub host their
tournament regardless of repercussions. Horne said, "We're simply saying don't
take the advice of the promoters, because if there is a prosecution, the
promoter doesn't get prosecuted, the venue gets prosecuted. So hotels and clubs
that are going to have this buy-in poker, which is where cash is involved, they
really need to take their own independent legal advice to assure themselves that
they're not breaching any laws." One business in Australia, Clubs SA says that
they have not been aware of any of their members of affiliates running any sort
of illegal games in their facilities. Online casinos are still the only type of
venue that can host cash buy in games.
The president of Clubs SA, Bill Cochrane, says that all of their poker games are
run for the pure entertainment factor and they are not a business for them, or
for profit. The president of Clubs SA said of the poker games, "We would be very
disappointed if there was any club participating in this type of game." He later
went on to add, “As an association we've reminded all our membership of their
responsibility in regards to compliance to their operations with this type of
tournament, we've stressed that there shouldn't be any buy-in games operating in
any club in this state." So anyone that likes playing poker for money should
stick to playing at their favorite online casino or internet gambling website.