Poker Skill Game in South Australia

A court of law in South Australia has ruled in favor of players who participated in a live Texas Holdem tournament organized by the Australian Poker Association. New South Wales has guidelines that legalize poker tournaments.

In a recent case, a court of law in the South Australia Department confirmed that poker involves skill and is not merely a game of chance. As usual, the outcome depends on specific wordings of the applicable jurisdiction, but the decision confirms the view that poker is treated differently from pure games of chance when deciding whether unlawful gambling has taken place, according to Mondaq.com.

The court mentioned other popular games as well. Games like roulette and lotteries are likely to be considered as games of pure chance, while games like bridge and backgammon are not.

Despite a general lack of clarity in the legal application, a number of Australian states are aware of the popularity of poker and have issued guidelines that describe how poker should be regarded

For instance, New South Wales has issued guidelines that recognize that poker tournaments can be played legally in the department.

Australian regulators will surely keep their interest in poker, and measures may very well be undertaken to guarantee that poker tournaments can only be organized according to local guidelines.

And as always, we notice that the legal-political attention remains transfixed with the issue of skill vs. chance, rather than taking on the whole question of what kind of game poker is and what values it brings to its eager practisers.

Read our latest article about skill vs. chance in poker.