My name is Julian, I'm 36 years old and live in with a background in economics. I have coached , written mathematical software for and profitably played millions of hands of with Australians and worldwide. I feel I can offer a perspective that is different and more transparent than other sources you will be exposed to. Due to the evolving online poker environment (detailed below) I have little special interest, unlike recreational players and the online poker providers rallying them. Unlike the established Australian gaming industry and the anti gaming lobby groups.

Online poker has been an unsolved competitive maths problem. A game of chance where money is wagered. As a competitive maths problem, it has required every increasing skill to win. The monetary incentive to win at poker has provided an arms race of skill and technology development for those that wish to take place. Poker is purely a game of skill over the long term. In the short term, (which can be 100's of thousands of hands!) luck can prevail.

Some skills that can be transferred to other walks of like that poker demand development at include:

- Basic Maths - Calculating betting sizes, odds. - Discipline - with luck dominant in the short term, it is important to execute and stay to plan during these times. - Determination - the hurdles of short term luck, effort required to improve demand determination. - Low investment exposure to a competitive environment - Very similar to a competitive sports environment, however with development stronger in logic & maths. - Advanced maths/Game Theory/Artificial intelligence - Leading worldwide universities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libratus) and private operators use poker as a conduit to improve these areas. The efforts used to improving poker play have direct transferable applications in other, real-world problems. Problems that involve complex decisions based on imperfect information. Such as cybersecurity, military strategy, business negotiations, medical planning, data analysis, traffic & information distribution. Plus many, many more applications. http://interestingengineering.com/artificial-intelligence-wins- 800000-against-poker-masters/

- Concentration/execution - One must always be vigilant to not make costly mistakes. Some players can play greater than 1000 hands per hour. - Psychology - One must be compete with and be able to exploit and avoid exploitations with understanding their own and others mental strengths and weaknesses to operate in an extremely fast and stressful environment. - IT skills/ Programming skills - Due to the online environment and many maths tools that can help improvement in ones poker game, skill development in these areas is natural. - Logic - Risk Management/ Probability assessment - With extremely large standard deviations of winrates, risk management lessons range from applications such as crossing the road to advanced portfolio theory. Also due to the experience of having played through this risk. It helps develop and intuitive understanding of risk. Something I have not seen develop as efficiently in risk managers in financial markets. Another extremely competitive area, but one without 'forced experience'. - Problem solving - Self Reflection/Improvement - Relationship building - Discussion with other players and experts in their respective fields.

For these and other reasons, poker has been and is used as a very effective training tool and universities and business worldwide.

Social Harms of online poker.

I am in a position to accurately describe social harms of poker. So I will leave that to others apart from a couple of points.

Poker is a slow way to lose money. Requiring a time investment with many long hands, many decisions burn through ones money.

Casinos hate poker. They don't like it because players are not losing to the house, the house takes a fee, not losses. Players are not losing fast enough, taking up real estate that games with faster turnaround can have. Poker games in are kept to a minimum. Only provided where they are in the hope of enticing poker players to play other casino games.

If games such as poker that have slow loss rates become unavailable, with these recreational players turn towards faster games that offer no benefit but a dopamine injection. Very likely. Playing only for a dopamine injection, something poker is at odds against, creates problem gamblers.

Is the amended Interactive Gambling Act 2001 is a reasonable and proportionate response to those harms and benefits? To answer that we must imagine the consequences of passing this amended act and therefore prohibiting online poker.

Prohibiting online poker will likely:

- reduce the numbers of Australians from playing online poker. - remove reputable online poker providers availability to Australian players. - increase targeting of Australians to play with irreputable online poker providers. - increase Australian participation in irreputable online poker providers, with costs and losses to these people (we have even been encouraged by ministers to 'get a VPN' and play anyway. This, despite the legal repercussions, is not possible anyway because reputable poker sites are very serious about obeying countries laws and combating abuses) - increase Australians outlet for gambling in other more degenerate gambling options.

Even without those consequences, prohibiting poker is naive. It could very well be the gambling past time with the most social benefits to the country. With those consequences it is absurd.

The evolving online poker environment.

Two important things affect the current online poker environment and should have a bearing on legislation.

1. Due to differing world wide regulations and laws, online poker has extremely high barriers of entry for online poker providers. This has created an environment where we have one provider that can monopolistic price. Monopolistic pricing in poker is not simply about pricing ones competitors with other online providers out of the market. It allows the monopolistic provider to price out players from it's games. It does this by raising fees (or rake) demanded to provide poker games to specific players. The profitable players. This has the affect of having online poker games raked so highly that they often are not profitable at all for any players. We then end up with a games that eventually all losses go to the online provider and none to players. This is important, because it turns online poker games into 'casino games' removing the completive aspect and all the benefits it provides. If we are separating legality of games such as poker from casino games. Something to monitor the profitability of online poker games so as not to become 'casino games' due to a monopolistic market should be looked into.

2. Advances in artificial intelligence, game theory combined with programming have effectively solved most situations in poker. This means that there is an optimal way to play every decision required in a poker game. This is having and will have the effect over the next few years of ending the competitive benefits poker has enjoyed. It will increase the skill and ability of all players, reducing winrates of profitable players and increasing rake collected by online providers (if profitable players win at at a lower rate, the online providers receive more rake) It will also severely reduce the volume of online poker games that eventuate as more and more people have access to and become aware of this technology.

Due to the the monopoly existent in the online poker market and their desire to turn poker games into casino games to extract monopolistic profits, they have no desire develop new games that can not as easily be solved by AI, game theory and computation. Eventually new games will eventuate. But there may very well be a time, when online poker and casino games are the same.