Gordon Pemberton: editor of the two-up guides
Gordon Pemberton is the editor of How to Play Two-up and writes every page on the site. His work is reading and checking: the two-up provisions in the gambling Acts of all eight states and territories, the Liquor & Gaming NSW two-up rules, the Australian War Memorial's records and the ANU's dictionary notes. He dates everything he reads, so you can see how current each page is.
What Gordon does
Gordon starts every guide with the law. He reads the two-up sections of each Act, from the Gambling (Two-up) Act 1998 (NSW) to the Gaming Control Act 1993 (NT), and names the Act and section beside each claim. When a rule turns on numbers, he works the maths in one line you can follow: two heads come up one toss in four.
For history he goes to the records: the Australian War Memorial’s articles and collection, and the ANU’s Australian National Dictionary Centre. The dictionary records show when words such as “kip” and “come in spinner” entered the language. Newspapers, tourism sites and reference websites appear only with their names in the sentence, so you can see where each detail comes from.
What he doesn’t claim
Gordon Pemberton is the name our editor writes under. He isn’t a lawyer, holds no gambling licence and has no link with any RSL, club, pub or casino. The guides don’t lean on personal stories or memories of a particular pub: each claim points to the Act, rule sheet or archive page it came from, with the date it was read.
What he has written
The site began in 2026, and Gordon checked every guide on 27 September 2026. Good places to start:
- the rules of the ring, point by point from the Liquor & Gaming NSW two-up rules;
- why two-up is illegal most of the year, state by state with each Act and section;
- two-up on Anzac Day: what the law allows on the day and how games are run;
- two-up odds and the house edge, in a fair ring and under casino rules;
- the history and glossary of two-up, from the 1880s to “come in spinner”.
How he keeps the guides current
Before each Anzac Day, Gordon rereads the Acts and rule sheets and checks every venue page the guides mention; the next round is due before 25 April 2027. Each page shows when it was published and when it was last checked. The full method is set out in how we check our facts.
Corrections go straight to Gordon at hello@howtoplaytwoup.com, ideally with the page address and your source.