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Originally Posted by SwoopAE
Had a read; it's about what I expected, slightly disappointed the Betway people weren't able to state that online poker has a lower rate of problem gambling than other forms (which is fairly obvious to anyone familiar with the various forms of gambling) but it's not their area. Lots of good questions on the taxation/revenue side, Duniam seemed interested in that which is good as he is our Liberal Senator on the committee and we'll definitely need him to take our case to the Liberal Party internally if we're going to get favourable legislation out of this.
Overall the submission seems great for us, we have a serious large regulated gambling corporation detailing the revenue the government would be able to collect and saying they'd be willing to be taxed and provide player protections and enter the market is big for us too.
Joey any updates on your end recently, do we know if there are more hearings and if so when etc?
We should be careful in the claims we make. We should explain how online poker sites can help with problem gamblers and self exclusion but claiming some superiority over other gambling is problematic. I know it attracts people like you and me who are controlled, that bankroll management is key to us, that we look to break even or better and can achieve that but that is not the whole story.
In the UK there are real measures on 16 types of gambling. The one with the lowest participation is poker in pubs and clubs that has a tiny number of participants but it is easily the highest PG rate at 26.8% - that's a product of PG playing many types and so taking up a higher proportion of all players but the same applies to the online poker world, it is niche it has low participation by the general population but like all gambling it attracts addicts. This is why it can be right to say that a higher proportion of online players of all types and online poke players are problem gamblers. They are the early adopters who play all the new games,
If you reduce it to game structure not participation then the ring game vs tournament argument gains credibility.
In poker it is easy to identify problem gamblers and help them - that's the point - not that online poker is better than anything else in terms of attracting problem gamblers.