25 Apr

Australia Online Pokies – Legality

The gambling laws in Australia are not straightforward, as is the best in many other countries. Gambling is legal here, at least for the most part. Offline gambling is widely embraced in Australia, for instance, but in Western Australia there are restrictions in place that ban the installation of pokies in pubs, clubs and hotels, which is where they are commonly found in other regions. As if to purposely confuse matters, there is a legal casino in Western Australia, located in the city of Perth.

As far as online gambling is concerned, there can be issues with websites launching from within Australia. This does not apply to all gambling though. There is also a law written into the gambling code that says Australian gambling firms can not advertise in the country. This doesn’t seem to do them any harm though, as it has been estimated that 8 out of every 10 Australians will gamble at one point throughout the year, which is a greater figure than any other country.

One sure-fire way to gamble online within Australia, and to know that you are doing so legally, is to stick to sites created within Australia when it comes to online casinos and pokies, and to International sites when it comes to poker, which can fall into a grey area. Luckily, most International casinos and pokies accept players from Australia, so there is no shortage of options here. This also guarantees a safer marketplace. In countries such as the United States, black flags raised over online gambling have led the biggest sites to block US players, which means that those players often have to turn to smaller sites, ones without an extensive history, without an array of banking options and without a great number of genuine reviews. This obviously leads to a lot of scams, but as an Australian, with so many legitimate sites to choose from, you have no excuse when it comes to falling for any of these.

Below we have listed the biggest online casino at the moment, one that is attracting hordes of Aussie gamblers everyday, and one that caters for an International crowd. This site is not based in Australia so there is no issue with some of the more confusing laws, and Aussie players are free to signup and to take advantage of the new-member bonus on offer.

Royal Vegas

Royal Vegas Casino flies the flag for the Digimedia company and for the Fortune Lounge Group, which is a proud collection of trusted, secure and established online casinos that offer exceptional customer support and unrivalled software. The beauty of this casino is not only that it has a huge new member bonus on offer, with Aussie first-timers able to secure up to $1,200 to play with, but that there is also a generous loyalty scheme and much more. The Fortune Lounge Group acts as a separate entity to Royal Vegas, offering a trusted badge that casinos wear with pride. It also offers all players on all of its casinos extra promotions, tournaments and more. These change all of the time and there is no set schedule, but throughout the year these promotions include slot tournaments, poker tournaments and blackjack tournaments, with players able to win everything from cash and free bets, to a sports car, a cruise and much more.

Royal Vegas also has some of the highest progressive jackpots of any online site. They are actually very proud of these jackpots, as you would expect, which is why they have an ongoing total on their homepage, announcing the jackpots for all of their progressive pokies. These change all of the time, but games like Mega Moohlah always seem to have several million dollars on offer. At the time of writing this is actually $6 million, but a few weeks ago it was nearly twice that. The fact that it has gone down means that there is one more Royal Vegas millionaire out there, and if you stick to this game then you could join that elite group. This is not one of the best games on the site, but as Royal Vegas uses Microgaming, there is no shortage of quality pokies to play, with more being added all of the time. Cyberstud Poker is one of our favourites and this usually has a jackpot of several hundred thousand dollars.

If you want to get even more out of Royal Vegas, then as well as the new member bonus mentioned above, you can also get yourself 75 free bets to play on the pokies, providing that you join in the next couple of weeks, as this promotion isn’t always available. If you deposit using Skril, Neteller or one of 4 other web wallets, then you can also pickup an extra 10% in credits, and you can do this time and time again, ensuring you have more money to hit the progressive jackpots with.