I'll make sure to study and bring up their false statistics if given the opportunity

Apparently I have 3 minutes to make an opening statement before committee members ask me questions and it's expected to last half an hour.

Any and all advice appreciated, i'll obviously speak with Joey and study the AOPA submission and 'family whatever fake statistics' submission prior as well as read Dr Gainsbury's study in full rather than just the summary which is something I haven't done yet

Submission done. Great job to all who sent something in. Swoop/Joey, again, great work guys.

its not hard to get some statistics to try and present a point towards your own way of thinking etc.

i ran some stats of my own, over 100 hands KK beat AA 100% of the time.

this is probably a correct stat tho, i went to the doctor yesterday, for a few weeks i've been really ill, im afraid the diagnosis may come back that i have the rare disease of Pokatitis.

Today is the last day to make submisions guys.

Great work so far but we need to make sure we keep pushing hard all the way to the finish line.

1) Jump on the AOPA FB page and share today's message as a final call to action

2) Make sure people you know have had their say

3) If you haven't done so already right your submission

We can't put in too much effort guys. This is the final sprint!

For those who interested "Dr Sally Gainsbury and Professor Alex Blaszczynski" submission is up.

and the link is

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_...er/Submissions

This is the gambling commission page on PG stats:

http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk...-gambling.aspx

There are loads there so may be too time consuming.

The best summary is probably this PDF esp p11
http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk...urvey-2012.pdf

As for the revenues raised from online gambling the latest stats show £4.5bn a year in Gross Gambling Yield which is taxed at 15% so £675m in new tax revenue from the 2014 Act and associated point of consumption tax. They don't do a split as to how much of that is poker.

I got a sub in today. I focussed on benefits of poker. Then gave them some info on the current poker economy, mainly coz I don't give a **** poker as we know it is doomed regardless of what they decide. Poker is too insignificant and they're not smart or knowledgeable enough to implement good legislation.

I'll post it later, don't have it on me now.

I wonder whos job it is to read these submissions?

Will it be open till midnight AEST? Still hoping to get mine done.

Should be

Makes the other paper (1) look worse than ever. This is a proper paper and helpful for us.

got my submission in on time pretty happy with what I wrote, mentioned stuff like the social aspect and the small stakes online and how people will be forced to play higher stakes in casino's

Good work anyone who got one in.

I wonder if we can find out how many personal submissions were made along with the four 'official' ones listed there

Great work to anyone who made a submission, and anyone who didn't let us down. I think we should have got 100+ subs, seems like this thread got a couple dozen maybe and i'm aware of another 10 or so from personal friends, I assume we should have had somewhere from the 50-200 range if I had to guess but no idea. Hopefully they go some way towards implementing sensible policies to regulate online poker in Australia.

I'm more optimistic. Easily > 200 submissions

I think they all get posted so we should find out- I would love more than 200 but I think >80 would be a pass mark

The Department of Social Services submission is up. It summarises the increased risk of gambling via an online channel (reasonably) but there is nothing specific to poker in that. It talks of a 'National Framework' that is in the pipeline and will apply to all forms of gambling. I don't know about this but perhaps this is a body we should be engaging with? Overall, they don't really blast online poker more stress the need for consumer protection and regulation which is broadly what we're arguing for.

The DSS submission and O’Farrell review makes similar statements:
1. “for online gambling, the rate of problem gambling is said to be 2.7 per cent”
2. “41 per cent of on line gamblers considered to be 'at risk' gamblers (low-risk, moderate-risk and problem gamblers), whereas less than 20 per cent of land-based gamblers were considered to be 'at-risk'.”

The O’Farell review references for this are:
18 Gainsbury, S., Russell, A., Hing, N., Wood, R., Lubman, D. & Blaszczynski, A. 2014, The prevalence and determinants of problem gambling in Australia: Assessing the impact of interactive gambling and new technologies. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 28(3):769-779
19 Hing, N., Gainsbury, S., Blaszczynski, A., Wood, R., Lubman, D. and Russell, A. 2014, Interactive Gambling, Gambling Research Australia, p.93, accessed 12 November 2015, <http://www.gamblingresearch.org.au/resources/6482d5fa-f068-41e5-921f-facd4f10365e/interactive+gambling.pdf>

Both statements above are in Pg.93 of the “Interactive Gambling, Gambling Research Australia 2014”, http://www.liquorandgaming.nsw.gov.a...ling-2014.aspx.

The review stated, “There is currently insufficient evidence to conclude that interactive gambling is causing higher levels of gambling problems” (Pg XV), yet both the DSS and O'Farrell are implying that interactive is higher.

Chapter 3 of the report documents a Telephone based survey (Sample size 1,767). Table 4.11: Problem gambler (PGSI = 8 or higher): N=26 Rate=2.71%
The table shows that 84% of interactive gamblers were low risk or non-problem gamblers compared to 94% of non-interactive gamblers, which looks way better than the way DSS and O'Farrel put it, "41% ...."

Chapter 4 of the report also documents an online based survey (Sample size 4,595). Table 5.26: Problem gambler (PGSI = 8 or higher) N=6 Rate=1.0%
Table 5.26 shows that 89% of interactive gamblers were low risk or non-problem gamblers compared to 94% of non-interactive gamblers.

Note, there are numerous places in this report where the number of problems gamblers was so low due to the small sample, that they had to combine moderate risk and problem gambling numbers to get reliable statistics.

There is also appears to be significant issues on how the surveys got their the samples, how they categorize interactive gamblers and non-interactive gamblers, etc. To me this leads to significant bias against interactive gamblers.

Again, it is always the case that minority gambling activities have a higher percentage of problem gamblers. Think of it like tech - they are the early adopters, they use the most methods to gamble, the new gambling appeals to them more than anyone else...because they are problem gamblers.

I 100% guarantee that more problem gamblers buy lottery tickets than play poker or bet online but they are swamped by the mass of the public that buy them who are not problem gamblers.

It really is simple maths even before you get to the sample size stuff and another debate on what moderate risk means.

For instance if you ask a poker player if they have ever played longer than expected or wanted to I can guarantee that any honest tournament player who has had a deep run will have to say yes...coz they were doing really well. Like many I have fell asleep deep, occasionally played all night -

" Have people criticized your betting or told you that you had a gambling problem, regardless of whether or not you thought it was true?"

well TBH the Mrs was never pleased when I was still playing at 8am and calling work to book a day's holiday coz I was so deep. I'd have to say yes which puts me in the moderate risk group for doing well.

The Sally Gainsbury paper talks about how the standard screen based mostly on financial issues are unlikely to apply properly to poker.

It's not reasonable at all. It is based on no real measure at all. Of course the first people to take up online gambling were problem gamblers. That skews the percentage and is a huge point against causation because of access.

As online gambling becomes more mainstream their % of PG falls, the number of PG is not rising. The whole basis of the paper is just dim, it is so stupid I find it hard to take it seriously...unfortunately it fits with "common sense" and with all those opposed to gambling in general.

More access does not mean more problem gamblers - they already have enough access to ruin their and their family's lives...the point is how best to help them.

I think the thrust of their argument is that increased access is a higher risk for problem gamblers as opposed to creating problem gamblers, which I'd agree with.

I'd go further, I don't think increased access increases risk for problem gamblers. They do the lot whatever, For instance there are lots of studies on students and gambling, for the simple reason that they can recruit students easily and cheaply to the surveys.

They did one in Kerala (India) where all gambling is illegal. They found that they had the same problem gambling rate (roughly) as all the rest, they were right in the middle despite a total ban.

I admit to being extreme in my view that PG will do the lot whatever access they have but look at say prisons or the anecdotal stuff about betting on raindrops on a window. You don't need legal gambling to be a problem gambler, the legal firms just break fewer legs.

I wonder how any reasonable person could think this will do anything for anyone looking to wager online other than drive them to illegal offshore sites or their nearest tab/pub.

I wouldn't categorise problem gamblers as one group. They are a spectrum and sure at the extreme end they'll gamble on literally anything. However, for those not there (yet) limiting access is a logical approach to reducing damage / further harm.

I don't want to distract from the main argument which is PG are not drawn to online poker nor do them evolve from it. Indeed it could distract them from the pure gamble from say pokies by introducing an element of a game which takes longer than a pure gamble.

When is the likely date for the result of this?