What happened in 2017
The Interactive Gambling Amendment Act closed the ambiguity the major rooms had been operating in. Within months PokerStars and 888poker withdrew from Australia, and the online poker economy that had built up here over a decade emptied out. It remains one of the clearest cases of a single amendment reshaping a hobby overnight.
What is left are offshore rooms and the poker tables inside offshore casinos. They are smaller, the traffic is thinner outside peak hours, and the field quality varies enormously from one to the next.
Table poker and video poker are not the same game
They share a name and share almost nothing else, and people lose money on the confusion.
- Table poker is against other players. The house takes a rake from the pot and has no stake in who wins. Skill compounds over time, and so does the rake.
- Video poker is against a paytable. It is a machine, like a pokie with a decision in the middle, and the house edge is fixed by the paytable rather than by your opponents.
Video poker has excellent published RTP on a full-pay machine — 99% and above — and terrible RTP on a short-pay one with the same name and artwork. The difference lives in the payout column for a full house and a flush, and checking it takes five seconds.
Every operator in our tables goes through the same four steps, in the same order. We grade what actually happens, not what the casino promises on its landing page. Criteria, weightings and the reasons an operator gets left out
How we test every casino
What to look at in a room
- Traffic at the hours you play. A room with two hundred players at 9pm Sydney time and twelve at 7am is a different product depending on when you sit down.
- The rake structure. Percentage and cap. It is the one cost that is certain, and over a year it dwarfs most other considerations.
- Whether tracking software is permitted. Some rooms ban it, which changes who has an edge.
- The payout route. Same question as everywhere else on this site, and it applies equally: see payment methods.
The rake is the only thing at a poker table that is guaranteed to take money out of the game. Everything else is a transfer between players, and over a long enough period the rake is the house’s whole business.
Where a beginner should actually start
Not at a cash table. Low-buy-in tournaments cap what a bad session can cost, and the structure forces the decisions that matter — position, stack size, when to fold a hand you like — into clear view. Learn those three before worrying about anything more advanced.
And learn them away from the table first. Poker is the only game in this market where reading for an hour genuinely improves your results, which cannot be said for anything in online pokies. Which app or room is even worth installing from Australia is covered separately in best poker apps.
Frequently asked questions
Is online poker legal for Australians?
The 2017 amendment made it an offence to provide the service to Australians without a licence, and no licence is issued. The rooms operating here are offshore. The prohibition targets them, not you.
Why is traffic so thin?
Because the major international rooms withdrew in 2017 and the player base fragmented across smaller offshore sites. Peak hours are still busy; off-peak often is not.
Is video poker a good way to clear a bonus?
Usually not. Its high RTP is exactly why casinos weight it at 10% or zero toward wagering, as covered in no deposit bonuses.
