Canberra is the capital of Australia, and Australian Capital Territory is set aside to be the seat of all government in the country. Located in a relatively small area in the south-eastern portion of Australia and surrounded by the territory of New South Wales, ACT the smallest federal territory in all of Australia, containing just one city, Canberra itself.
Tourists vising Canberra and residents of this Australian Capital Territory city have a single casino complex where table games and poker are allowed – Canberra Casino, also known as Casino Canberra.
Canberra Casino Game Details
Casino customers looking for traditional table games and poker will find Canberra Casino a welcome spot. The site’s gambling floor takes up a little more than 38,000 square feet, a large enough space for the inclusion of poker machines. Electronic gambling machines are available at the casino, though the site is not licensed to host actual pokies. Many attempt to lobby the territorial government of ACT and the government of Australia to allow the site to place poker machines on the floor have been met with consternation from lobbyists who represent the bar and restaurant industry in Canberra. Those areas bring in a lot of income through poker machines, and the concern is that if Casino Canberra starts to host these popular games, income from the machines at the city’s many nightclubs and eateries will start to plummet. As of this writing, Canberra’s casino is not able to host any spinning reel games.
In Australia, pokies are such a big part of casino gambling, it is very unusual for a venue of the size of Casino Canberra not to provide poker machine games. However, video poker and other skill machine games are on offer – a few hundred of them in fact. Video poker games are distinct from pokies in that they are variations of machine games based on the rules of the card game poker, and are therefore classified as skill games. Pokies are traditionally considered games of chance and are in a distinct category from video poker titles and the other skill games hosted at Casino Canberra.
In order for Canberra’s only land-based casino to provide the poker machines that Australians and foreigners love, a piece of legislation put together by the territorial government would have to pass and allow Canberra Casino to be licensed for this type of game. A majority vote at the territorial level in support of such licensure is unlikely; many times in the past just such legislation has been put forth and tabled.
Poker Room Details
The fact that Canberra Casino has a poker room sets the site apart from Australia’s other gambling floors. Other casinos in the country, almost all of which have licenses to host pokies and a license allowing for a larger collection of table games, don’t offer a true head-to-head poker room or poker tournaments. At Canberra’s casino gambling site, every Thursday is set aside for poker tournaments where as many as forty players compete at No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em games with a buy-in set at AUD $115. At these tournament events, cash prizes are handed out to gamblers who finish in the top five.
The casino’s biggest live poker tourney events are the site’s two seasonal championships, the Winter Poker Tournament and the Summer Poker Tournament. The only way to get a seat at these events is to win them at satellite events that take place over the course of a given year. The satellite tournament schedule is available from the poker room or on the casino’s website.
Customers interested in them can take part in Sit & Go tourneys only available by demand. The casino’s poker facility allows between six and eight gamblers at a time to play in small No Limit Hold ‘Em poker tournaments, with buy-ins set at AUD $60. These on-demand only events have no re-buys, and offer cash prizes for the top three finishers at each table. Blinds in these tournaments are set to begin at $25/$50 and increase every fifteen minutes until a tourney winner is established, with blinds doubling after the first two hours of play.
