How Australia fights online poker

The Interactive Gambling Act of 2001 makes it an offence to provide, or advertise certain interactive gambling services including online poker. However, thousands of Australians are still participating in online poker games. ACMA which is responsible for investigating complaints under the Act in relation to prohibited Internet gambling content has announced it would filter poker URLs. 

One of the anonymous representative of a local, in-person poker tournament company stated, although those sites were operating illegally, government had to find some alternative way of fighting them. The representative offered to “prosecute one person,” as many Web sites of local in-person poker tournament operators promoted international online poker sites. “Linking to a .com poker site is illegal, but local poker companies and Web sites do it because no one has been prosecuted yet,” ended the representative.

Some examples of popular poker sites included into ACMA's blacklist could be partypoker.com, fulltiltpoker.com, 888.com, pokerroom.com, pokerstars.com, mansion.com, etc. Even poker news site pokernews.com was included into the blacklist. 

The spokesperson highlighted that many tournaments and operators who are not doing anything illegal, are at the same time “looking for a back door into online poker so stick with a reputable company”.