Australians love winners.

      Which is why when Joe Hachem became the 2005 WSOP champion, he instantly became a national hero. Unlike a lot of players, even in the U.S., Hachem is a genuine “gets stopped in the street” celebrity. Not only has poker helped Hachem achieve stardom, Hachem has helped Australian poker develop into a massive industry.

    I found myself invited to a good friend’s wedding, which was taking place Down Under. Now, a wedding in Australia is not a weekend away for someone in the UK like myself. I was going to have to spend a good deal of time down there to justify the 22-hour flight.

      So what else than sample the Aussie brand of poker that produced one of the best world champions in recent history? 

Photo Op!

The start of my poker journey began in the most obvious place on the tourist itinerary, Sydney. Getting a picture of myself at the Opera House had been high on my priority list for months, so once I got that out of the way I was left to explore the city.

      Sydney, at first glance, smacks of many major cities, with shades of London or New York embedded within.

      Take a closer look, however, and Sydney is completely devoid of some of the things that make big-city life a grind. It is remarkably clean for the most populated area in the country, and, even at rush hour, seems a considerably chilled-out and relaxed centre of commerce. If Sydney is anything to go by (and it is), Australia is much like any other place, with a significant amount of the bullshit and cynicism removed.

    So, satisfactorily enlightened as to my surroundings, I got down to business. Namely, the Star City Hotel & Casino in the middle of Sydney, which is New South Wales’ only casino. The 24-hour  entertainment complex has a 145,000-square-metre gaming floor and caters to pretty much every house game imaginable.

      It also has a comparatively much smaller cardroom. It was the setting for the recent Asia Pacific Poker Tour grand final. The event attracted a lot of big names and the $1 million first prize was grabbed by local boy Grant Levy.

      By a strange coincidence, Levy’s brother used to date my sister back in England. Small world, this poker world.

    When not hosting major events, the nine-table cardroom is fairly humble. The location of the poker room, stuffed in a corner away from the house games, and the lack of tables suggested that poker was the red-headed stepchild of the casino, despite the clear demand.

      The room is open almost 24/7, and there is always a queue for a seat at a table. You can sign up for a number of tables at a time and receive a text message when your table is free. The choice of cash games is pretty limited – the only game played seriously is hold’em, both limit and (mainly) no-limit. Omaha is available on an “interest” list, which rarely gets more than one name on it.

    Standard games range from $80 buy-in to $1,000, with some unusual and unplayable structures. Few tables will allow you to sit down with more than 30 big blinds at a time. The $200-max game, for example, has blinds of $5-$5, and the $500-max game had blinds of…$5-$5 – for some inexplicable reason. This meant that play was very much like a tournament, with one pair being enough for most players to put their money in the middle with. 

Loose Gooses

This left me with an early and ultimately tainted view of the standard of play in Australia, as the tables were about the loosest I’ve ever experienced in real life. A big preflop raise will still elicit about six callers, and often you will hear the words: “Well, I guess I’ve come this far” before someone sticks the remainder of his cash in the middle with middle pair.

      I would have loved to have spent a month grinding away at this particular casino for that reason alone.

    However, another reason the action is so loose is that one has to be very active to stand a chance to keep up with the obscene and sporadic rake structure. The amount and way you pay your table charge is entirely dependent on the table you sit at. Some tables would take an hourly charge, others would take up to 10 percent of the pot and the worst table I sat at would take $1 every hand (from every player) whether you played it or not.

    A dollar doesn’t seem like much, but these hands played fast and loose and 25 or even 35 hands could feasibly be dealt an hour. Adopting a tight approach at these tables could result in a significantly depleted chip stack by the time you found a hand worth playing.

    Because Star City is the only casino in New South Wales, they can pretty much charge whatever they want in table rake, as they have no governing body to tell them to stop gouging.

    Poker in Sydney was ultimately a very frustrating experience, but if there was one saving grace it was that the atmosphere at the table was brilliant. Everyone was very friendly, very talkative and very jolly at the table. Bad beats would be taken in good jest and a well-played hand would be congratulated by everyone at the table.

      Sydney and Melbourne may be the only two places an event organiser is ever likely to arrange a major poker tournament in Australia, but playing cards is rife across the entire continent. Ever since Hachem came home with the Main Event bracelet, poker has been huge Down Under. Spread across the land all over Oz you will find “pub poker” leagues, and one can usually find a televised poker game at any time on one of the 40 or so sports channels. 

On to Melbourne

If Sydney was akin to a Third World in poker terms, Melbourne was to become a veritable Nirvana. I headed to the Crown Casino knowing only that it is one of the biggest casinos in the world and is the stage for the Aussie Millions tournament every January, the largest event in the Southern Hemisphere. I was playing in the Pokernews Cup, the first tournament organised by Tony G’s global news website.

    Unlike Sydney, the Crown Casino had an enormous cardroom that was completely separated from the house games. The first thing you notice is a room full of PokerPro machines, the computerised poker tables that eliminate the need for a human dealer. These machines host satellites, sit-n-gos and cash games $1-$2 and lower.

      Take a walk away from the automated-table area and you find yourself in a huge cardroom with more than 50 cash tables. The choice of game here is plentiful, starting from $2-$3 NLH and going up to whatever level anyone rich enough can demand (Tony G was organising a $50,000 sit-n-go while I was there, if the rumours are true).

    Pot-limit Omaha is available; however, it tends to be at the higher stakes and generally speaking, no-limit hold’em is king here, as it is most places these days. You can literally find whatever level game you wish at these tables, and the complete cash experience is accommodated for, rather than the “shove ’em in a corner and bleed ’em dry” version in Sydney. The room is also very spacious, which is an often overlooked quality in a cardroom.

    The rake is an hourly $3 table charge and 10 percent of each pot, which is capped at a certain level depending on your stake. The dealers are superb and most tables have automatic shufflers. The standard of play is a lot better, although still very loose compared to other continents I’ve been to. 

Name- Dropping

There are a handful of very fierce players who have cut their teeth inside the Crown Casino, including Joe Hachem, Tony G, Mel Judah and Mark Vos. When I was in town, I was lucky enough to come fourth in the Pot-Limit Omaha Rebuy tournament, sharing a very intimidating final table with Lee Nelson and Tino Lechich, who won the event, and for such a rarely played game, the standard of Omaha was very strong.

    The icing on the cake was that the poker room is open 24 hours a day and you can always find a good game. This is a room that caters to the needs of poker players and has clearly been designed by poker enthusiasts. Poker in the Crown Casino closely resembles the experience found in Las Vegas and for me, it was a cash-game player’s dream.

    Poker in Australia is a rapidly growing industry, and the Crown Casino leaves the poker player wanting for absolutely nothing. If there is a problem with playing cards Down Under, it is that the country does not have a unifying regulatory body, which is why the experience differs so greatly between Sydney and Melbourne.

      I wouldn’t recommend that anyone take a brutal long-haul flight just to play poker in Australia, but if you are heading to the Oceanic region anyway, particularly if you are a cash-game player, then you simply must go to the Crown Casino and try to hook yourself a big Ozzie fish.