Poker site pokerasiapacific.com is reporting that the Coalition plans to ban online poker in Australia. Technically online gambling is illegal already but this is not enforced. However, the main issue appears to be that poker is being equated to pokies and is therefore a game of chance and not skill. However, anyone who has played poker knows that this is far from the case.

To the uninitiated It's easiest to understand the game if we break the elements of playing poker in to three categories.

A third of the game is based on blind luck. Anyone can get the top hand (called 'the nuts') on any given day and beat the best player in the world. However, this is modified by how you play your winning hand. If you get a Royal Flush, you then have to make it pay off. There's little point in winning a hand if you don't get any reward for doing so. If you gasp in excitement, raise the pot to its maximum and have a big grin on your face, then all of the other players are likely to take one look at you and fold their hands. Winning the war is the goal. Experienced players expect to lose many battles along the way, and the cheaper that is, the better.

It takes great skill to pretend you've got a low hand but keep your opponents thinking otherwise and experienced opponents will have seen every trick in the book many times. The way you bet, the amount you bet, the amount of time it takes you to bet and the difference in the way you play one hand over your previous hands all influence those who know what to look for. More on this below.

The second third of the game is pure maths. If you can work out the odds - on-the-fly - of what cards are left in the pack and the likelihood of the cards you need turning up later in the game, then you are immediately above the majority of players who are simply hoping that their card will turn up. If you play the odds, in a sensible way, it is highly-likely that you will win more than you lose over time.

The final third of the game is arguably the most important and is derived mostly from skill and experience. It encompasses elements of the first two 'thirds' above and adds much more. In terms of raw luck, if you've got a good hand then the skill is how to maximise it, but you'll also be working out what the other players on the table have in front of them.

How can the best players get so lucky?

The best players will beat you without looking at their cards. Over time they'll see how you react in various situations, when you bet, when you don't, how long it takes, if you touch your face, sweat, fidget in relation to what's going on in the table. They'll know how likely the other person will be to win compared to you and they'll know how to gain extra clues through raising bets by various amounts to see your reaction. If they think you're uncertain as to whether you can win, they'll easily scare you away with a monster bluff regardless of what they're holding.

The ability for novices and greats to compete is unparalled elsewhere. This all comes down to the classic saying that poker, (particularly the popular Texas Hold'em variety of five cards face up, two cards face down) 'takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.'

The best players regularly turn up in the same finals. That doesn't happen by chance. The following video shows what some believe is the best hand of poker ever played, featuring Phil Ivey - possibly the best player ever. In it Ivey has nothing and yet defeats an opponent who is trying hard to bluff him in a pot that reaches over a million chips. The commentators give a great summary for those who don't follow the game.

Another great player is Daniel Negraeanu. It doesn't take long in this compilation to see his skills. At one point the commentator says, "Oh yeah, did I mention that Negreanu can read your soul?"

The internet is full of clips like this, the dramatic vignettes make for great viewing thanks to the psychological battles involved. Not surprisingly, poker stories are also incredibly popular and many players write about memorable hands all the time, often as advice for what to do and what not to do in certain situations.

Naturally the tension makes for some great films and there have been some absolute classics. At the basic level you have Daniel Craig's Casino Royale which spoon-feeds you what's happening at a very basic level. On a more serious note you've got Rounders with Matt Damon and John Malkovic. You can watch the final scene below (Spolier alert, natch) and it's worth noting that the drama of that scene is repeated all of the time in the real deal which is why the game is so attractive.

Other greats include 1966's timeless A Big Hand for the Little Lady and the game is also featured in the legendary, The Sting.

Online Gaming

I've played many online games and for a while spent a lot of time on online poker. While you can't see your opponents, this is more attractive to novices as experienced players can't see you and gain advantages from your bad poker face and mannerisms.

Typically, novices will start out playing for free and very many people do this. Once my confidence was up, and I knew what I knew and what I didn't know, I invested $20 in a bankroll and played high-rolling 1c/2c games. You can play for hours and sometimes finish up a little bit up or a little bit down, all the while having risked little more than $5. Limits make sure things don't get out of hand. The low stakes keep the sharks away. I never once thought of it as gambling, it's a game with a slight bonus financial element.

Occasionally tournaments appear where there are real prizes for no entry fee. Most tournaments see you pay a fee to enter and then everyone gets the same number of chips. Some will let you win entry to major real-life tournaments and we've already seen rank-amateurs play alongside the best at the fabled World Series of Poker using this method. In how many sports can you see home-based amateurs challenge real World Champions like this? That progression is available to anyone who plays if they have a little bit of luck and don't screw things up.

In my case I won a $500 camera by finishing third in a tournament which took about five hours to complete. My investment was nothing. Sure things got tense towards the end and you start getting those fabled gambling sweats, but then I had those when I was about to finally defeat Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII.

Free, addictive games that cost a fortune

Lately I've been playing a casual video game on the iPad called, Clash of Clans. I got into it because Mr 10 wanted to play it because all of his friends did. I kinda took over. My fiance, tired of us talking about 'our village' and checking on it many times every day and so surreptitiously installed it and played it herself. Now she's hooked too. But here's the thing. While it's free to play, you can make things much easier for yourself by spending real money.

You can spend days saving up to build a new defence structure and then wait a full week for it to be built, or you can pay several dollars to have the whole process done instantly. To date, I've spent around $50 on it - which is a ridiculous amount for a games journalist to spend on such a low-rent game. But the top players have spent tens of thousands of dollars on it. It's one of the top-grossing things on Apple's App Store ever, it's fiercely addictive and people spend a lot of money.

Not that Clash of Clans is a problem, but there can be very little difference between its spending patterns and those of poker. The best way to rationalise it is to equate how many hours of enjoyment you get out of it with how much you invest. That's what my friend who has spent over $100 playing War Thunder has done. He plays it more than any other game and gets value from paying money to avoid long waits in what is otherwise a free game.

How different are these to Zynga (makers of Farmville) Poker? This lets people log in with Facebook and play for free every day. If you run out of chips you buy more with real money: very much like Clash of Clans' microtransactions. Does this count as gambling? You're technically betting real money but you're also simply paying to play a game using a different model. Or are you?

Gambling

Poker obviously has a gambling element involved, but poker does not feature high on the lists of gambling problem games. While I'm no expert, experience and observation tell me that the slower and considered approach to poker, which always involves some kind of strategy, is inherently different to perpetual blind hope whereby someone becomes desperate for the buzz of winning and will throw any money they have (or don't have) at a possibility of obtaining that feeling. Welcome to addiction.

But how many people are addicted to poker? There are surely some, but one suspects it's more the financial aspects that prove problematic to some people and not the game itself.

Politics

Melbournian, Joe Hachem, won the World Series of Poker back in 2005 and became a national hero. Are we to dismiss an Australian World Champion as simply a gambler and an example of what is wrong with Australia?

According to Tim Napper a Labor election win will likely keep things the same - poker will exist in a legal grey area. However, with Nick Xenophon and Tony Abbott equating poker with all online gambling its Australian existence is under threat with a Coalition win:

"Tony Abbott has said "...every smartphone is a poker game and that's just not on as far as the Coalition is concerned. It is a dark cave into which people can so easily retreat and there they are beyond help".

One suspects this is a throwaway comment from someone who is uninformed. While its fair to link casinos and poker - that's where the game traditionally resides - it's a very different beast from the likes of Roullette where strategy is minimal and luck governs all. This has serious implications for a large online poker industry and Australian players who will understandably cry, "Nanny State!"

My personal experience of poker is that it's significantly different to other traditional forms of gambling - many online players play for no money or super-low stakes - and that while problem people cases will appear, it is not to a stand-out extent beyond lethal drivers, violent drunks and addicts of prescription medicine.

Going to Las Vegas and watching newlyweds sitting at one-armed bandits (still in the bridal gown) is as tragic as watching gormless souls at the local RSL's pokies.

Pointedly, they don't make movies about that. Isn't that because there's a significant difference between pokies and poker?

That's my opinion, but what do you think? Feel free to add your thoughts on the developing theories that much of this is a play to wangle tax from the poker sites or even that real casinos are lobbying to have their competition stepped on.