He used to play more often, and had once been a regular on web forums where he and other players - some recreational, some more serious - would get together to talk about the game.

"We wouldn't talk about, 'I won this, I lost that'," says Mr Del Duca, who works in Sydney's finance industry. "What people would talk about is how they played a specific hand, what I could have done, the strategy. There was a great community."

When he logged back onto a forum in December last year, he was surprised to see the chatter had changed. It was not about tactics or tournaments anymore. It was about something else entirely. All people were talking about now was a raft of new federal laws that will more strictly enforce a ban on unlicensed online gambling operators, including poker providers, in Australia.

Soon to pass Parliament, the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill is best known for closing loopholes that have allowed "in-play" live betting online during sports matches. But the bill will also tighten an existing prohibition of all internet gambling activities apart from sports betting and lotteries - the only forms of online gambling permitted under the law.

Online poker is illegal in Australia, but it barely existed when online gambling legislation was first written in 2001 and, according to gambling experts, it has been operating in something of a "grey area" ever since. Some of the more reputable global poker providers, including PokerStars, Poker Party and 888Poker, once sponsored by cricketer Shane Warne, have been freely providing accounts to many thousands of Australians for years. Overall it's estimated there are up to 130,000 Australian players.

Under the new laws, which have bipartisan support, any ambiguity will now be removed. While it is not an offence for Australians to gamble online, unlicensed operators providing an interactive gambling services to Australian customers will face massive new penalties - $1.35 million a day for individuals and $6.75 million a day for organisations

"Many of the companies that operate in Australia are publicly listed in Canada and the UK," Mr Del Duca says, "but they are now saying it's not in their interest to operate outside of the laws of Australia, and have indicated they will be leaving."

Poker service 888Poker told its Australian users earlier this year that their accounts would be closed and they should withdraw their funds. PokerStars is expected to withdraw from Australia once the new laws take effect.

Outraged, poker players across the country have banded together, and formed a lobby group, the Online Poker Players Alliance, to press the government to protect poker from the clamp-down and eventually allow poker providers to be legally licensed in Australia, which would increase tax revenue and consumer protections. Poker should be treated differently to other forms of gambling, the lobby group claims, because it incorporates elements of skill and strategy, and money is won and lost between players, not "the house".

A Senate committee last week launched a little-known inquiry into Australians' online poker participation, and is examining the impact the latest legislation will have.

"I think Australia is rather silly to take a prohibitionist approach," says Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who initiated the inquiry.

"Online poker is probably the most innocent of all gambling ... it's more of a game of skill, not just some sort of vacuous pull of a handle."

A number of submissions to the hearing, however, disagree. Representatives from the Salvation Army told Tuesday's hearing that online poker was one of the fastest-growing and most popular forms of gambling, and people who gambled online were at three to four times greater risk of problem gambling than those who played at venues.

"An increase in online gambling and in particular online poker naturally increases the rise of problem gamblers," its submission said. "This indicates that this is not merely a harmless activity but can become a compulsive dependency."

The Salvation Army said online poker sites deliberately emphasised the element of skill involved in poker, to encourage an "illusion of control, despite there being little evidence to support the idea that skill is involved in long-term success.

Another submission from the Australian Institute of Family Studies said poker players (online and offline) had seven times the rate of gambling-related health and financial problems than regular gamblers. "Regular poker players appear to be exceptionally vulnerable to problem gambling and associated harms," it said.

University of Sydney gambling expert Sally Gainsbury said proposed changes to the Interactive Gambling Act and exodus of the more reputable providers could put consumers at risk of using less-reputable sites with fewer consumer protection measures.

"This raises concerns about other practices of these sites which may have few consumer protection measures leaving players at risk of cheating, lost funds, and potentially victim of cybercrimes," Dr Gainsbury said.

Federal Communications Minister Mitch Fifield told Parliament this year that the intention of the Interactive Gambling Act had always been to prohibit services such as online poker.

"That is why there are no Australian-licensed operators of online poker, but, because the law has been ambiguous, overseas operators have been freely offering these services to Australians," he said.

"With the law being clarified, it is evident that a number of these operators have begun withdrawing their services from Australians. Whilst I appreciate that this is not welcomed by those individuals who have been using these services, it is a fact that online poker has always been a prohibited service under the act. It is not something that this bill is enacting. Whether online poker should be legal in Australia or not is a separate debate."