A Short History of Pokies in Australia

The origin of the word pokies

Every country has its own name for the machine with spinning reels. Americans say slots, the British say fruit machines, and Australians say pokies. The origin of the word pokies lies in the full name, poker machine. Early machines did not show cherries and bells but playing cards, and a winning line formed a poker hand: a pair, three of a kind, a flush. Australians took "poker machine", trimmed it and added the familiar "-ie" ending, the same treatment that gave the language arvo, barbie and footy.

The name stuck long after the cards disappeared from the reels. Today a pokie can be a five-reel video game with dragons, a grid of falling sweets or a fishing adventure, and none of them deals a poker hand. Yet the word survives in every pub, club and online casino aimed at Australians. Understanding the origin of the word pokies tells you something about how the machines arrived: as an American invention, adapted to local habits.

How pokies came to Australia

The mechanical slot machine was developed in the United States in the late nineteenth century, and the card-reel poker machines that gave pokies their name came from the same era. Machines of this kind found their way to Australia in the early twentieth century, often operating in clubs and hotels in a legal grey area. Demand grew well before the law caught up.

The real turning point came after the Second World War. Registered clubs, especially returned servicemen's and sporting clubs in New South Wales, used machine revenue to fund buildings, facilities and community activities. In 1956 the state legalised poker machines in registered clubs, making New South Wales the first Australian jurisdiction to do so. That decision explains how pokies came to Australia as a mainstream pastime rather than a back-room curiosity: they became part of the club economy.

A local industry grew with them. Aristocrat, founded in Sydney by Len Ainsworth in 1953, built machines for the newly legal market and went on to become one of the largest gaming machine makers in the world. Its later titles, such as Queen of the Nile and Big Red, became household names in Australian venues.

The 1990s: pokies spread across the states

For decades, New South Wales stood almost alone. Most other states held out until the early 1990s, when governments looking for new revenue changed course. Victoria and Queensland allowed gaming machines in hotels and clubs from 1992, South Australia followed in the mid-1990s, and Tasmania later in the decade. Western Australia took a different path and kept machines confined to its casino in Perth, which is still the case.

The machines themselves were changing at the same time. Mechanical reels gave way to video screens, linked jackpots joined machines across a venue, and features such as free games and multipliers became standard. Each state wrote its own rules on bet limits, minimum returns and the number of machines per venue, which is why the experience still differs between, say, a Melbourne pub and a Sydney club. Those rules are the backbone of venue regulation today, and they shaped how Australians came to think about the odds.

That is also when the language of return to player entered the conversation. States set minimum percentages that machines must pay back over time. Online, the studios publish an RTP for every game; our page on pokies RTP and volatility explains what those numbers mean for a player today.

Online pokies and the Interactive Gambling Act

Internet casinos appeared in the late 1990s, and Australian lawmakers moved quickly. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 made it an offence to provide online casino games, including pokies, to people in Australia, while still allowing licensed online wagering on sports and racing. The Act targets operators rather than individual players. Amendments in 2017 strengthened enforcement against offshore operators.

The result shaped the history of pokies in Australia in a way few predicted. Local operators could not offer online pokies, but offshore casinos, licensed in places such as Curaçao, Anjouan or the Tobique First Nation in Canada, continued to accept Australian players. Instead of Aristocrat cabinets, these sites carry games from international studios such as Pragmatic Play, Play'n GO and Hacksaw Gaming. Today you can try many of them in demo mode on our free pokies page, or compare casinos for paid play in our guide to real money pokies.

Pokies today: from the club to the phone

The most recent chapter is the smartphone. Online pokies are now built for portrait screens first, and features have grown more elaborate: tumbling reels, grids that expand, hold-and-win respins and bonus buys. Payment has changed too, with PayID, prepaid vouchers and crypto alongside cards. At the same time, the venue side has seen new protections, and nationally the BetStop self-exclusion register for licensed wagering began in 2023.

Looking back over the whole history of pokies in Australia, the striking thing is continuity. The machines changed from mechanical to digital, from clubs to phones, but the core idea remains the one that gave them their name: a spin, a random result and a paytable that, over time, favours the house. Our Australian online pokies guide picks up the story from here, with today's casinos, games and payment options.

Timeline: key moments in Australian pokies

Pokies history FAQ