How to play two-up: the Anzac Day coin game, its rules and where it's legal

What is two-up

Two-up is a gambling game played with two coins, a flat wooden kip and a ring of punters. One player, the spinner, stands in the middle and tosses the coins high; everyone around the edge bets on how they land. GambleAware NSW sums up its appeal in three words: simple, fair, and needing almost no special equipment.

Soldiers made it a national game. A War Memorial glossary of AIF slang from the early 1920s calls it “the most popular game in the A.I.F.” By the mid-1930s, the Memorial says, two-up sat alongside dawn vigils and marches as part of Anzac Day culture. Back home, diggers kept playing after the march, and the game has stayed with the day.

For the rest of the year the game is off limits almost everywhere. There’s no stand-alone two-up ban: as an unregulated form of gambling, it falls under each state’s gambling law, and every jurisdiction carves out Anzac Day. Here we cover two-up, the coin game; the 2Up feature in the Up banking app and the “2 Up & Win” bookmaker promotion share the name and are separate things.

The people and the gear

A game needs a handful of roles and very little kit. The names below follow the two-up rules published by Liquor & Gaming NSW, the state regulator, with older words in brackets where the diggers used them. Once you know these six, the calls at the ring start to make sense.

• Spinner — the player who takes the kip, steps into the centre of the ring and tosses the coins.
• Ringkeeper (the ringie) — runs the game, calls valid and invalid spins and holds the centre money. Under rule 3, the ringkeeper’s decision is final.
• Boxer — in older accounts, the owner of the game, who supplied the gear and took a commission where one was allowed. Sources don’t always agree where the ringie’s job ends and the boxer’s begins.
• Kip — the flat wooden bat that carries the two coins, tails up, into the toss.
• Pennies — two coins, traditionally pre-decimal pennies, with the tail side marked by a white cross.
• Ring — the area the ringkeeper marks out; only the spinner may stand inside it during play.

How to play two-up, step by step

A round runs the same way whether the ring is drawn on a pub floor or etched in the dirt. The War Memorial’s record of the 2/12 Commando’s game describes a circle with an 18- or 20-foot radius. This is the order of play under the NSW rules.

1. The kip goes round. Moving clockwise, the ringkeeper offers the kip to each player in turn. Whoever takes it first becomes the spinner.
2. The spinner picks the coins. The ringkeeper throws down a set of seven pennies inside the ring. The spinner chooses two and lays them on the kip, tails facing up.
3. The centre is set. The spinner gives the ringkeeper their stake. The ringkeeper holds it, together with a matching stake from someone backing tails, and that pot is the centre.
4. Side bets go on. Only once the centre is fully covered can the crowd bet with each other. Tails backers hold their notes up until a heads backer takes them on.
5. “Come in spinner.” The ringkeeper’s call closes the betting. The spinner steps into the ring and tosses both coins off the kip.
6. The toss has to be good. The coins must clear the spinner’s head by two metres or more and land inside the ring without hitting anyone or anything. If not, the ringkeeper calls “no spin” or “barred” and the toss doesn’t count.
7. The coins decide. Two heads and the spinner wins the toss. Two tails and the spinner loses everything in the centre, along with the kip. One of each is odds, and the coins go up again.
8. Three heads to collect. No winnings leave the centre before a third straight head. From there the spinner can walk away with the money or keep spinning; when a spinner finally loses, the kip moves on clockwise.

The whole NSW rulebook runs to 19 short rules, and the first one makes them optional, so a venue can run its own version. The ringkeeper’s word on the day is what counts, and we go through each rule on our page about the rules of the ring.

Heads, tails and odds: the chances on each toss

Each coin is a 50–50 shot, so both land heads once every four tosses. Both land tails just as often. The remaining half of all tosses are odds, which settle nothing. The table below is all the maths you need at the ring.

Odds are simply thrown again, so a bet can only end in heads or tails, and those two are equally likely. Over any run of tosses, heads beats tails exactly half the time. A bet on heads against tails is an even-money bet with no edge for either side, and that evenness is why GambleAware NSW describes the game as fair.

The picture changes where someone takes a cut. The casino versions reported by Wizard of Odds and Wikipedia add a rule that everyone loses on five odds in a row, which gives the house 3.125% on a heads bet. Those sums, and what a WA permit’s commission does to the maths, are on our page about two-up odds and the house edge.

Side bets: how most of the ring plays

Only one person spins at a time, but everyone around the ring can bet. GambleAware NSW describes two lots of betting running at once: the spinner’s centre, which is always a bet on heads, and the side bets that players make with each other. If you’re not the spinner, a side bet is how you play.

A side bet is a straight even-money wager between two people. You call your side, find someone who wants the other, and each of you puts up the same amount. GambleAware NSW describes the stakes sitting with the tails backer until the coins land, when the winner scoops both. Nobody else is involved and “no-one is taking a cut of the pool”.

The law keeps it that way. In NSW, a legal game can’t charge an entry fee or take any commission on bets or winnings (Gambling (Two-up) Act 1998, s 7). A registered club may raise money only when every dollar goes to charity (s 8). In Queensland, all money wagered goes back to the players, and any entry fee goes to the RSL (s 179).

Where and when two-up is legal

Every jurisdiction in Australia allows the game on Anzac Day, but not on the same terms. Where you can play depends on the state, and the rules fall into three groups.

• Any premises: NSW, and the ACT, where the owner of the place has to consent.
• Tied to the RSL or veterans: Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory, where the game is run by, held at or approved by the RSL, a services club, a veterans’ organisation or, in South Australia, Defence premises.
• By permit: Western Australia, where the Minister may grant RSL clubs a two-up permit each Anzac Day (Gaming and Wagering Commission Act 1987, s 48).

Two-up outside Anzac Day

A few games run on other days. The Gambling (Two-up) Act 1998 (NSW) allows two-up on 15 August and after noon on 11 November (s 4A). Broken Hill has a year-round game under a council authorisation (ss 9–11), played at the Palace Hotel. Tourism Western Australia lists regular games at Kalgoorlie’s two-up ring.

The other two exceptions are regional. Western Australia can permit games at venues outside a 100 km radius of Crown Perth (ss 80–81). The Northern Territory allows two-up after the last race at race meetings held over 80 km from either of its casinos, in Darwin and Alice Springs (s 54(4)).

Outside those exceptions, playing is an offence: in NSW, a player faces up to 50 penalty units ($5,500) or imprisonment for 12 months (Unlawful Gambling Act 1998, s 14). Online two-up for money comes only from offshore casinos, and the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth) prohibits offering it to anyone in Australia. The state-by-state detail is on our page explaining why two-up is illegal most of the year.

On the day: what to bring and what to expect

The ANU’s Bruce Moore notes that returned soldiers played after the march, and venue lists still reflect that: Time Out’s 2026 list of Sydney venues shows most games starting at midday. NSW law sets no noon start for Anzac Day itself, so the start time is each venue’s call. Check the venue’s own page or noticeboard before you head out.

Bring cash in small notes, since side bets are matched hand to hand. Under-18s have to stay out of the area where the game is played. Wait until the centre is set before you bet, and stop betting at “come in spinner”. The ringkeeper has the final say on every toss, and rule 18 is short: “Unseemly conduct or offensive language shall not be tolerated.”

Before Anzac Day 2024, the NSW regulator told venues it would check games and asked them to “fully understand and observe the traditional rules”. Two-up is still gambling, so set your spend before you walk in. If gambling starts to worry you, Gambling Help Online is free, confidential and open 24/7 on 1800 858 858. Venues and timing by state are in our Anzac Day two-up guide.

The kip and the pennies

The kip is the small wooden bat the spinner tosses from, and the regulator’s rules call it just that: a wooden bat. The word was already in print in Sydney by 1885. Crossword clue “two-up paddle”, three letters: KIP.

The coins are traditionally pre-decimal pennies. A game run to the NSW rules keeps fourteen in two sets of seven, each tail marked with a white cross. Three straight heads bring a fresh pair. Edward VII pennies, the “baldies”, were popular because a bald king’s head was easy to pick out. Sets and home-made kips are on our page about the kip and pennies.

Where two-up came from

The name “two up” appears in the Australian National Dictionary from 1884, and the ANU’s Bruce Moore has found similar games in north-east England and Ireland. Moore dates “fair go” in the game to the 1890s shearers’ strikes. “Come in spinner” arrived only in the Second World War, when troops in the Middle East also called the game “swy”, from the German for two.

The law caught up slowly. South Australia legalised Anzac Day games in 1995, and NSW’s Gambling (Two-up) Act came in 1998. Queensland followed in 2012, after its minister admitted the game had been “technically illegal” while police “turned a blind eye”. Tasmania’s current declaration dates from 2024. The full timeline and 27 terms of ring slang are in our two-up history and glossary.

My take

What stays with me after reading every state’s two-up provisions is how little the game itself has changed. Two coins, a kip, a ring and a call: a digger from 1917 would recognise a pub game today, even though “come in spinner” arrived a war later.

The law around it is the tangled part, and it changes at every state border. If you’re going to a game this Anzac Day, read the rules of the ring once before you go. Knowing when the centre is set and what “barred” means makes the first ten minutes much easier, so start with the rules of the ring.